Review: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride & Prejudice
written by Jane Austen

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads (There are so many editions and versions of this wonderful book, that I just chose a sampling for these links.)

Why did I pick this book: Chrissy and I decided to read each other’s all-time favorite books for EFC’s second Blogoversary. One of Chrissy’s many all-time favorites is Pride & Prejudice.

Did I enjoy this book: Do I really need to answer that?  It’s classic.  It’s epic.  It’s ELIZABETH BENNET for goodness’ sake! Of course I enjoyed it – as I do every time I read it.  I love everything about this book: the language, the ribbons, the serious drama that reads as just a little bit silly today… I love all of it.  Most especially, though, I love Mr. Bennet.

—You thought I was going to say Mr. Darcy just then, didn’t you? —

Yeah, he’s a dreamboat (a snarky, sarcastic, grumpy old dreamboat) but I’m absolutely smitten with Mr. Bennet.  I love him.  I lurv him.  I like him more than is appropriate for book reviewers to like literary characters.  When I think about Mr. Bennet, I want to hug him, offer him a drink, or maybe just buy him a book. I hear he likes books.  He’s, well… he’s awesome, and my mind’s eye sees the happy ending not when Lizzie and Darcy end up together, but when a tearful Mr. Bennet tells me he is “quite at [his] leisure.”  Yeah, he might not be the most fiscally responsible guy in the universe, but he raised five daughters and put up with a less than intellectual wife without killing anyone. HE’S the hero.  HE’S the one who deserves the happy ending.  <Ahem>  :::steps off soapbox:::

Um.  Mr. Darcy is nice, too.

Would I recommend it: Yes.  I especially recommend it to my husband, who has no idea who Elizabeth Bennet is (luckily he’s seriously addicted to the Thomas Covenant series and Dune, or I’d worry about his literary literacy) (Yes, I just said literary literacy.  Twice).

Will I read it again: You betcha.

About the book – from Goodreads: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners–one of the most popular novels of all time–that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the “most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author’s works,” and Eudora Welty in the twntieth century described it as “irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”

Happy reading wherever you are and whenever you get a free chance!!!