read all of Jane Austen's novels

Mansfield Park is the only one left. Don’t know when I will get to it. Now that I’m not in school anymore, I can’t push things off until Christmas Break.

It is not what I expected, and I am really liking it. It is going slowly, as I read slow, and only have time to read a few pages here or there. I expect to be done in a few weeks. My sweet darling surprised me with a copy of Without You, Anthony Rapp’s book, so I may take a break from Austen for a bit after this.

It was cute. The read was very pleasant, it got a slightly “page-turning” toward the end before the general’s behavior was explained. I’m not sure how believable the relationship between Henry and Catherine was. It was a good story for a highly intelligent and charismatic rich man to fall in love with a artless simpleton with less money, but I had wished Catherine was a bit more endearing. It felt that he and his sister fell in love with her because she was safe and “without designs,” something pure which they pitied, and was a welcomed contrast to the house they were raised in. If it had been a Thackeray story, Catherine would have been ridiculously beautiful (although dumb) and then it would have been easier to believe.

I just checked out Sense and Sensibility, which I hear is better. I dislike Mrs. John Dashwood and hope she doesn’t get any more unpleasant than what she is in the first ten pages.

It is pretty good so far, but it is certainly the slow, idling writing style i remember from Pride & Prejudice. Which is quite perfect actually to supplement my academic studies. I don’t want something so page-turning that i neglect other things.

I’ve been reading it just before bed and while waiting for classes to start throughout the day. I was using a gigantic copy that was in a binding together with two other Austen novels, but it was getting annoying to carry around. I swapped it with an hardcover, pocket size copy from the library, copyright 1905 or something very old like that.

I read Pride and Prejudice a few years ago. I tried reading Emma once or twice, without much success. Now I am working on Northanger Abbey. This should take me a few years.