Pride and Prejudice (#6)

Back to unfinished book business... for convenience sake, last week I did a combo entry about both reading The Color Purple and seeing the musical (again)... and I promised to get back to Book #6 of 2008... and today is your lucky day!

Every so often, I try to read a classic.  Sometimes I am more than pleasantly surprised (Tolstoy's Anna Karenina?!?), other times I am not. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was the latter.

Now, it wasn't that it was a bad book... having certainly stood the test of time, I could certainly grasp the merit of the book... but ultimately, for me, I think it was just a case of the wrong book at the wrong time.  I had been flying along in my reading challenge (over 1,400 pages in January!) and here was a book that forced you to slow down... slow way down. 

I just opened the book to a random page and here's an example of one sentence:

To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by folly which he must have witnessed.

After typing that out, I wouldn't say this was a typical sentence... it certainly doesn't roll easily off the tongue, so to speak... but it is an good example of the rhythm of the book, and I assume, Austen in general.  Good stuff, but not easy reading... again, perhaps just for me. 

The main reason I read this is that I had never read anything by Jane Austen... and it seemed like I should have by now.  And who hasn't know of this book?!  I'm guessing people even have heard of the lead characters, the pluckyElizabeth "Lizzie" Bennet and the object of her hate/love, Mr.Darcy.  Also, a motivation was a chance to "read the book, see the movie"... PBS has recently been airing The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece (it's just Masterpiece now, they've dropped the "Theater" tag)... part of this series was what many believe is the definitive film version of Pride, a 6-hour mini-series starring a young-ish Colin Firth that was produced by the BBC (I believe) and originally aired here in the States on A&E.

Since I was having such a hard time, I decided to start watching the mini-series (just up to the parts I had not read, of course!)... just to make sure I was "getting" it.  Sure enough, I wasn't missing any plot points, just struggling with the language.  It's all very prim and proper and English (and okay, stuffy)... pretty much the stereotype of what you would think would be on PBS/Masterpiece Theater.

Ultimately, I respected the book but didn't enjoy it... which kind of sounds like the expectation one would have going in and reading a "classic." 

I would certainly recommend the mini-series... and I am also curious to see the most recent big-screen version with Keira Knightley as Lizzie (though Jennifer Ehle in the mini-series was superb!)... so if I am still interested in seeing another version of Austen's work, I guess the book could not have been that bad.

Needless to say, Pride landed a big 'ole left hook to my reading challenge... the fairly slim 281-page book took me a whopping 18 days to get through (including 4 days "off")... and while granted it was a short month even with the leap day... my February tally of total pages read was 600 pages less than what I had read in January (which granted was an insane amount of reading).

Since then, my page surplus/lead has evaporated and I am pretty much right on pace to reach my goal... but I have yet to read a book this year that has really knocked my socks off.

2008 1-2-3-4-5 Reading Challenge: + 281 Pages (Total: 2,273 pages - Finished: 2/28/2008)
176 pages ahead of pace (-294 change in pace since last book).

Comments

[TKP]

But the quality of those P&P pages more than outweighs the loss in quantity. The first time you read it..let's face it, it just hurts. But let it sit, go back and read it again. Austens elegant language is quietly very, very effective. And then you get addicted.

[Scot]

You should watch THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. You might fall in love with Jane Austen, you might not. But you will fall in love with Hugh Dancy. Damn he's cute. It's a total chick-flick but still really fun to watch. It has a wonderful ensemble cast: Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, Kevin Zegers, oh, did I mention Hugh Dancy is in it? Damn he's cute.