Amazon.com Review
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
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. -Alix Wilber
This is the first book that I’ve read on my new Kindle. The Detective did very well this year for my birthday! My library check outs and book purchases will definitely go down because of this thing (though not so far). Most books pre-1923 are free so I’m reading all those classics I’ve always wanted to read, but haven’t - and I started with Pride and Prejudice as our book club selection a couple of months ago was the zombie version and I wanted to read the original before the satirical version.
I really liked this book. And though I’d previously purchased it in paperback years ago, I’d never gotten around to reading it. Once you get used to the language and manner of dialogue, it goes pretty well. I liked Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Also Mr. Bingley. Everyone else, I’d rather not get stuck in a room with for any length of time. [side note: I only made it 100 pages into the zombie version. It was a funny concept, but should probably have been a short story. However, before I completely condemn it, I am listening to the audio version and it makes me chuckle a bit.]
And since most people have already read this book, I’ll go ahead and just talk about what I like and don’t like about the Kindle so far:
1. I hate that there aren’t page numbers. I really like to know how many pages there are and how far I am. Yes, there is a bar at the bottom that tells what percentage complete you are, but that isn’t helpful to me yet. There are seemingly arbitrary numbers at the bottom that tell you are at 3245-3268 out of 10,435. At first I thought it was a paragraph count, but alas it is not. I’d rather have page numbers. And yes, I realize you can change font size which would cause it to be page 10 for several screens, but if you are smart enough to use a Kindle and change the font, you can accept that it will be the same page for a couple of screens.
2. I’ve now become marginally obsessed with my percentage progression. I should not care that much, but I do.
3. I like that I can download lots of things for free. I will catch up on some classics since they are available for nothing.
4. I like that I can have a gajillion books at once and not carry anything additional.
5. I don’t like that all the accessories are so expensive. The cheapest cover/sleeve is about $25.
6. I wish my local libraries allowed e-check outs for current books.
And my library check outs:
The Madame Curie complex : the hidden history of women in science / Des Jardins, Julie [I am way overdue on this one. It's the next book club selection, and I'm having a hard time making it through for some reason.]
Every last one : a novel / Quindlen, Anna [next month's book club pick]
Ender’s game / Card, Orson Scott [a reco to someone else on FB that I came across]
The weed that strings the hangman’s bag : a Flavia de Luce mystery / Bradley, C. Alan [read the first one a couple of weeks ago]
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks / Skloot, Rebecca [heard a story on NPR, then saw another story on CBS Sunday Morning, and now it may be the book club pick in 3 months.]
The devil and Sherlock Holmes : tales of murder, madness, and obsession / Grann, David [same guy that wrote Lost City of Z]
Home safe : a novel / Berg, Elizabeth [was a book club potential that was passed over, but I'd like to read it anyway]
