Karen in CO Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Yesterday, I read Pride and Prejudice. I've attempted Austin books before and never enjoyed them, but now I want another. I don't want to be disappointed. What should I read today? Who is as enticing as Darcy? My kids are sick and stuck in bed so I get another day to myself to read. I love Christmas break. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carol in Cal. Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oh, read it again. It's the best one, and anyway, you know you want to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jen in PA Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I like Persuasion.:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tammyla Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Negin Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 After I finished reading it - I'm talking a day after - I saw the A&E/BBC version with Colin Firth. Fantastic :D! Highly recommended. Very true to the story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen in CO Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oh, read it again. It's the best one, and anyway, you know you want to. :D That's what I was thinking this morning at 2am, but I decided that it was probably bedtime. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErinE Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oh, read it again. It's the best one, and anyway, you know you want to. Exactly. Sense and Sensibility is okay, but P&P is the best of Austen's books. I've tried to plow through Emma and Mansfield Park, but blech! just can't do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen in CO Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 After I finished reading it - I'm talking a day after - I saw the A&E/BBC version with Colin Firth. Fantastic :D! Highly recommended. Very true to the story. Thanks - I'm bumping all my dh's movies down the netflix queue to make room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lexi Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I vote Persuasion! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen in CO Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 Exactly. Sense and Sensibility is okay, but P&P is the best of Austen's books. I've tried to plow through Emma and Mansfield Park, but blech! just can't do it. Oh no. I was afraid of that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen in CO Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility Okay - Persuasion is on the Kindle now, but I'll read P&P again first. I might need more Darcy before I read something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katilac Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I always enjoy Northhanger Abbey. It pokes more open fun at societal conventions, spoofs gothic romance and Austen's own works, and is generally a fun read with lots of charm, romance, and witty banter. Unlike P&P, there are no big character transformations, and the big conflict comes from other characters, not the lovers. To give you an idea, this is how it talks about Catherine, the heroine: She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility; without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way. And Catherine and Henry talking about love: "Oh! no, not flirts! A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another." "It is probable that she will neither love so well, nor flirt so well, as she might do either singly. The gentlemen must each give up a little." It is a more open and 'self-concious' version of the wit Austen aims at society in P&P, with a lot of it done through the mocking remarks of Henry Tilney. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harriet Vane Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility :iagree: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility :iagree: FWIW, I love Sense & Sensibility. Also love the Emma Thompson movie version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigitte Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Okay - Persuasion is on the Kindle now, but I'll read P&P again first. I might need more Darcy before I read something else. I am reading Persuasion on the Kindle right now, too. It is my favorite of her novels. I like Capt. Wentworth better than Darcy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrappyhappymama Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I love all of Austen's novels... but each has a different flavor, and none comes close to replicating the things I especially cherish in P&P. As someone else mentioned, Northanger Abbey is a gentle spoof... it is more than that, but the romance, sweet though it is, isn't the focus, and doesn't have the same flavor at all. Mansfield Park is another under appreciated book, and I have dear friends who argue passionately that it has the wrong ending (I disagree at least as passionately, but that is another discussion!) - it too isn't as romantic a story... and it isn't *meant* to be... it's about love, in many aspects, and loyalty, and integrity - integrity in the face of challenges and temptations. There is much more to it than that, but those are the pieces that hold my heart. Persuasion is, in many ways, Austen's best novel, imnsho, it lacks some of the easy accessibility of P&P, but it is a treasure. Sense and Sensibility is the closest in flavor to P&P, and it would be the one I would recommend for you to read next. Emma is a delightful book - if you appreciate the heroine, and I do, very much, so I love it dearly. Emma has a degree of power, of agency, in her life and her society which the other Austen heroines lack. ...and yet she too is bounded by her duties to a loved one, and her world is thus, if we think about it, painfully small. In some books, we'd have a quiet tragedy...or, in more modern works, perhaps a throwing off of conventions or duties... or some deus ex machina that sends Emma off into the wider world. ...but here we have humor and a heroine whose lack of outlets and positive intentions create some problems... and the resolution is her own growth, not so much external circumstances. [i've watched all the Emma film adaptations out there, and am fond of many of them, but there is only one which gets the real heart, of the book and of Emma, right - this one ] Speaking of films... the newest Sense and Sensibility is, by light years, the best (though the Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson one is absolutely delightful... it is just, fun though it is, much, much further from the truth of the book and the characters... and the whole world in which it is set.) The Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds Persuasion is the best... though the newer one has some nice aspects. There isn't a good Mansfield Park yet - there are several which are enjoyable if you pretend they are unrelated to the book... and one that slogs a bit, but at least doesn't distort things too badly. This Northanger Abbey gets close to the right feel. Okay... this is dangerous ground, but I want to be honest with you. The Colin Firth P&P is wildly, incredibly popular (and deservedly so), but it is, despite the costumes and sets, very modern in its flavor and romance (I own it, I watch it, I am very fond of it, really!). This P&P is much truer to the period, and the book.. and it holds a very special place in my heart. Oh you brave, brave woman. Don't you know the Colin Firth P&P is sacrosanct? :lol: Thanks for all the movie recommendations. My Netflix is now smokin'! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I am reading Persuasion on the Kindle right now, too. It is my favorite of her novels. I like Capt. Wentworth better than Darcy. :iagree: I seriously love Mr. Knightly in Emma, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GingerPoppy Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Sense and Sensibility or Emma. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Create Your Ritual Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I read them all last year one after the other. ;-) I enjoyed them all, but for different reasons. I loved the wit in Northanger Abbey. I think P&P and S&S are probably my favorites. I also liked Mansfield Park. I think Emma was my least favorite of them. I went on to read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and then Villette. Villette had a tremendous about of figures of description and I loved pointing them out to my dc as I ran across them. (We are working through CC's fig. of description in our writing). The longest classic I have read was Vanity Fair and it was quite the epic story. Then I watched the movie with Reece Witherspoon. ;-) Now I have just started North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I vote Persuasion! Sense and Sensibility. Or...rent Persuasion, of course the version with Colin Firth! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eloquacious Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Or you could switch it up just a bit. I just finished North & South by Margaret Gaskell. Think Pride and Prejudice set a few decades later in the industrial North, with a bit of social commentary thrown in. (That is, not much - but the fact that it centers around a mill town and the workers are on strike certainly influences it.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susan C. Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 (edited) After I finished reading it - I'm talking a day after - I saw the A&E/BBC version with Colin Firth. Fantastic :D! Highly recommended. Very true to the story. The night before last, our entire family watched the ENTIRE BBC version in one sitting (5+ hours). It was great!!! I think I saw it priced reasonably at Best Buy. We got ours last year at B&N 50% off BBC sale. And, dd liked Emma (book and both versions of the movie). Edited December 29, 2011 by Susan C. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AuntieM Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Another vote for Pesuasion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmgirl70 Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oh, I do love Mr. Knightley and Emma! Though, I've come to love all of Miss Austen's people (What? Of course they are real people!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jane in NC Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Another vote for Pesuasion. :iagree: Jane (who had to go to Lyme Regis because of this book!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillametteMom Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 My vote is for Sense and Sensibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faithr Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I love all of them! I think Mansfield Park is the most profound, Persuasion the most romantic, Northanger Abbey is snort your coffee out your nose funny in some parts (to put it crassly!). I know Emma is very witty but the character of Frank Churchill just didn't work for me. Also, I found Emma's father annoying almost as much as the father in Persuasion. However, I've still read it several times, but it is probably my least favorite. I loved Sense and Sensibility and I do think it is closest to the mood and style of P&P. I love, love, love the conversation between Willoughby and Eleanor, you know. . . I don't want to say when it takes place lest I spoil the story! And I too appreciate the P&P version with David Rintoul. It seems really lame after the Ehle/Firth, but while it is closer to the story line in some ways, it changes certain things in a weird way too. And in that Rintoul version the filming and production values are so 70s and stiff. However, the look Elizabeth gets on her face when she's visiting Pemberley and realizes Darcy is there is priceless! The actress has these huge eyes and they get such a deer in the headlight look in them. For days after watching it I would break into giggles just thinking about that one scene. Also, that Rintoul version is nice because at the end Darcy kisses Elizabeth's hand so nicely. The Firth/Ehle version is a little flat in that scence, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhschool Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 No one is as enticing as Mr. Darcy. But you might try Persuasion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susann Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 I really enjoyed Lady Susan. A very different tone from the rest! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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