Pride and Prejudice - Quarter way through!

It may seem like I hate this book because I haven't written in so long and now that I do I am only a quarter of the way through, but it is actually one of my favorites so far. Life is betting busier with the holiday season and there seems to be less and less time to curl up by the fire with a mug of tea and a good book.

The thing that I love so much about this book is that it is light-hearted and funny. So many of the other books on the list are so deep and take forever to be interested in. This one had my attention from the very first (and very famous) line : It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. What a loaded statement!

I liked the discussion about the difference between pride and vanity. So often those two words are used to mean the same thing when in fact they are quite different. Many times I feel like pride is a negative attribute and something that should be hidden if it be felt, however the way it is explained make me want to seek out those things that make me feel pride. Its not a pompous or boastful thing, it is something to be recognized and praised.

And of course I am enthralled by the way in which Austen writes. I am not even trying to hold back in thinking the same way she writes. Hopefully this weekend will allow for some time to be spent reading.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is more my speed for the month of December. I have loved Jane Austen movies since I can remember so I am assuming I will thoroughly love this book (book are always better than the movies, right??). The only downside to reading books from this era is that I start speaking like the characters and everyone I encounter thinks I'm a wacko. All worth it! Here's the summary:

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.

Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree.

Super excited about this one!

The Fountainhead Interrupted

I tried many many times to get into this book but my brain would not have it. I must have read the first chapter eight times and every time I was finished I could not remember what had happened. Rather than suffering through another attempt I am going to put it back on the shelf and save for another, more studious day. I think that I have been reading too many books from a male point of view so I think I need to switch it up and read a more female book. So round one, Fountainhead has won.