Pride & Prejudice: The Last Installment

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE FOR DECEMBER'S GROUP READ! POLL CLOSES TONIGHT!!!!!

Now that November is concluding in a short few hours, I figured I'd give our group read one more plug. :) So here are a few questions for you on this dreary back to work Monday.

1. Did you enjoy P & P? I liked it. It was what I was expecting. A slow read with lots of hidden clues.

2. Are you planning on reading any other books by Jane Austen? I still want to try to read all of her stuff. I think the next one I want to tackle is Sense & Sensibility but who knows. I think I won't venture down the Austen path again until 2010.

3. Who was your favorite character and why? I had a few favorites. I liked Elizabeth as the narrator but she was kind of irritating at times to be a hands down favorite. I liked Jane for her seeing the good in people and her kind attitude. I liked Mrs. Gardiner for her good humor and awesome advice giving. She was a very good mother figure for the Bennet girls, as opposed to their own dim-witted mother.

4. What character did you like the least? Why? I did not care for Lady Catherine for obvious reasons. The woman was INSUFFERABLE. UGH. I probably would have have been as nice as Elizabeth was to her. I did not like Mrs. Bennet or Lydia becaus they were just plain stupid. I did not like Miss Bingley because she was a bitch.

5. Would you fall for Mr. Darcy? I would have given up after he first insulted me. However, that brings up the whole first impressions concept that Lisa and I believe Becky mentioned in their guest posts. Look what Elizabeth would have missed out on if she would have gone on her first impression. Look what Mr. Darcy would have missed out on. However, he was so incredibly rude, he would have to work very hard to win my heart and unless there was a shortage of men around, he would not get a second chance!

Answer these in the comments or on your own blog, I am interested to hear what others have to say. If you have any other questions you'd like to share, leave them in the comments! I love to talk about books. :)

Poll

The Poll is up for the December Group Read. It will be open until 11:59 on November 30th. I will announce the winner Tuesday, December 1st.

If you read Pride & Prejudice and want any more discussion questions, or want to post a review at your site that would be great. If anyone wants to do another guest post for it, I am up for that as well.

Let me know what you want, and I can make another post of discussion questions for P & P.

Happy Black Friday!!!

Review: Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Back Cover: Since its immediate success in 1813 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy. is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

I found this book to be immensely entertaining, but a little slow going at some parts. I was intrigued by the very first sentence, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in posession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Because my thought was, are you serious???? Because I would think it the opposite, stay away from my money bizaaatch. :) But that might just be me.

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy do NOT start out on the right foot, when she overhears him pretty much calling her ugly. However, they find that they are each others equal in terms of wit and humor. However, a lot of pride and a whole lot of prejudice keep them from understanding each other and acknowledging their true feelings for a good too many pages, where as the reader, I just wanted them to smell the roses already.

I did find parts of the book very predictable and found it very unbelievable how COMPLETELY crazy the two Bennet daughters were and how sensible and mature the other two were. Also not understanding how the father could even stand the mother.

Basically, Elizabeth and Darcy spend a lot of time dancing around each other with their words, misunderstanding others intentions and playing around with the information they are given. However, Darcy does grow up and change, mostly from Elizabeth's complete analysis of his shortcomings.

I guess it is fair to say that I liked the sparring and the one liners they would throw out at each other and at other dimwitted people, but the book went a little to slow and a little too predictable. I guess I had higher expectations.

What did you think of Pride & Prejudice? Have you seen the movie? What other Jane Austen book should I next tackle?

Teaser Tuesday - Pride & Prejudice

TEASER TUESDAYS (hosted by Miz B) asks you to:
Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!
My 2 “Teaser” Sentences for today:

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and
caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficent to
make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less
difficult to develop.

~ pg. 3, "Pride & Prejudice" by Jane Austen

Leave a teaser from your current read in the comments or post a teaser on your blog. Make sure you leave the author as well so others can check out the book if they are so interested. :)

Mannerisms & Subtle Signs

Hi friends! It’s Becky from Love Everyday Life. Our faithful blogger has been through a lot lately so I hope she is taking it easy and knows that our thoughts are with her (as are our virtual hugs).

Let me introduce myself. I’m a twenty-something outside of Washington, D.C. and I love my husband, books, OPI nail polish, and anything related to fall. But I have to confess. It’s almost halfway through November and I haven’t started the book we’re all reading yet.

I am really excited to read Pride and Prejudice – I’ve never read a book by Jane Austen before (don’t get me started on how I feel like my English degree doesn’t count because of that), and I honestly don’t know if Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth get together, but I’m sure it’ll be a heck of a journey to get to that point.

I found an article recently about Jane Austen – one of my bosses (a fellow English major) sent it to me, and it’s awesome. (Check it out here). Most of the article is about a new exhibit featuring Jane Austen, but the beginning is what caught my attention. It spoke of Jane Austen in a role we don’t necessarily see her in – that of a doting aunt. The exhibit showcases (among other things) a letter to her eight-year old niece Cassy, with everything spelled backwards. For instance, the beginning of the letter reads, “Ym raed Yssac,” and ends with, “Ruoy Etanoitceffa Tnua, Enaj Netsua.” (For those of you who haven’t had caffeine today that translates to “my dear Cassy” and “your affectionate aunt, Jane Austen.”)

The article described Austen as “precocious,” but mysterious enough where it’s hard to imagine what she was actually like. “You have to read her the way her most sentient characters read their companions, attending to subtle signs, mannerisms and language.”

Do you think it’s hard to separate an author from what he or she writes? Do you think they’re telling a story from their life at all (even if it’s a novel)? Sometimes I have problems separating celebrities from their roles in TV or a movie, but I don’t seem to have as much trouble with authors. Maybe because it’s easier to put down a book and go about my day as opposed to reading a recap of a TV episode online and seeing all the comments people made about it.

However, Jane Austen never married, and I don’t know much about her love life, but I don’t think she had very much of one. If that was the case, are you impressed with her ability to pick up on subtle signs and mannerisms between men and women, or do you think she used that as an excuse to sit back and watch? Have you noticed any subtle mannerisms in Pride and Prejudice? Do you wish you could write an entire letter backwards? Or are you like me and haven’t started the book yet?

(Thank you Becky for your very insightful blog post... NOW GET READING!!! ;) .. Thank you to all of you for your thoughts and prayers over some of the most difficult times I've had recently..)

Pride & Prejudice: First Impressions

Hello dear readers – it’s Lisa from Lisa’s Yarns! I’m helping out this week since pinkflipflop certainly has a lot on her mind with the passing of yet another grandparent. L It’s times like this that I wish I could hug a person through her computer.

Have you started reading “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen? I have actually read this book before, but I think it was 4-5 years ago, so I feel like I am reading it for the first time all over again.

Did you know that a previous version of this book was entitled “First Impressions”? Mr. Darcy & Elizabeth Bennet’s first impression of each other plays a major role in this book. The first night Elizabeth Bennet met Mr. Darcy, she overheard him making this comment about her:

“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men…” (p. 14)

Ouch. That’s a pretty rough assessment and must have been hard for Elizabeth to hear. It’s no wonder that she decided at that moment that Mr. Darcy was not someone she would want to associate with.

But sometimes first impressions can be wrong. Will Elizabeth’s impression of Mr. Darcy? I guess you’ll have to keep reading to find out!

Have you ever judged a person based on a first impression and found yourself to be completely wrong?

(Thank you Lisa!! Be sure to check out her blog, but I think most of you already do! )

November's Group Read is..

....Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen! I am excited to read this. I started reading it this summer when my grandma was in Ohio. Then left the book in Ohio and after I got it back, never finished. So I will have to restart from the beginning. But I am looking forward to talking about this one with everyone!!

Here is the review from amazon.com :

Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible,
incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an
insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character, who
if provoked is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her
exceptionally sharp -- but always polite -- 18th century wit. The point is, you
spend the whole book absolutely fixated on the critical question: will Elizabeth
and Mr. Darcy hook up?

Here is some info on Jane Austen from litlovers.com :

In 1801, George Austen retired from the clergy, and Jane, Cassandra, and
their parents took up residence in Bath, a fashionable town Jane liked far less
than her native village. Jane seems to have written little during this period.
When Mr. Austen died in 1805, the three women, Mrs. Austen and her daughters,
moved first to Southampton and then, partly subsidized by Jane's brothers,
occupied a house in Chawton, a village not unlike Jane's first home. There she
began to work on writing and pursued publishing once more, leading to the
anonymous publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811 and Pride and Prejudice
in 1813, to modestly good reviews.Known for her cheerful, modest, and witty
character, Jane Austen had a busy family and social life, but as far as we know
very little direct romantic experience. There were early flirtations, a quickly
retracted agreement to marry the wealthy brother of a friend, and a rumored
short-lived attachment -- while she was traveling -- that has not been verified.
Her last years were quiet and devoted to family, friends, and writing her final
novels. In 1817 she had to interrupt work on her last and unfinished novel,
Sanditon, because she fell ill. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, where
she had been taken for medical treatment. After her death, her novels Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion were published, together with a biographical notice, due to
the efforts of her brother Henry. Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral.Jane
Austen's delightful, carefully wrought novels of manners remain surprisingly
relevant, nearly 200 years after they were first published. Her novels—Pride and
Prejudice and Emma among them—are those rare books that offer us a glimpse at
the mores of a specific period while addressing the complexities of love, honor,
and responsibility that still intrigue us today.

Happy Reading!!! I am off to Ohio for the funeral and will be back late tomorrow...