Pride and Prejudice Paperback – 2 Aug. 2016

This Chiltern edition of P&P was *much* cheaper on here than local (chain) bookstores and is such a beautiful cover, the pages are really nice too! Hoping to collect the other books in the collection over time.There was no damage, and is the book I wanted... so I recommend.

Fast delivery and nice format to read

Excellent

Quality of book good.

Guess you could work out the ending

I have `known' Pride and Prejudice for a long time both through the BBC series and the more recent Keira Knightly film, and that's without mentioning all the modernisations (like Bridget Jones' Diary), so I have been meaning to actually read it for a long time. Why have I never read it before? Well I don't tend to have the best of experiences with classics, I gave up on my last one, Vanity Fair. The Hunchback of NotreDame got thrown across the room. I struggled through Rachel Ray, and regretted not giving u. I only liked Jane Eyre in retrospect and was never that into Wuthering Heights.In fact pretty much the only classic I have enjoyed (that wasn't written for children) was my first Austen, Northanger Abbey. Not long afterwards in the hope I had found a classic writer I actually enjoyed I started Emma, but on reading a little decided I wasn't really in the right mood, so I left the classics until now.So was Northanger Abbey just a flux? I was a bit worried it would be as it's known as the `different' Austen novel. Certainly it is very different from Pride and Prejudice but still I liked this at least as much. Just as with Northanger Abbey I found that I was laughing a lot more than I had expected. I loved Lizzy. She comes across so much smarter and wittier, and even more caring than she does in either filmed adaptation and while I had liked Lizzy in both (probably more in the BBC version) I got to know her in the same way the book allowed me to (certainly that is probably something that is generally easier to do on the page than on film, but that's a discussion for another time I think.).Generally I knew what to expect from the book, in some ways it made it easier to read because in areas when I felt the book was getting a little slow I knew it couldn't be long until a bit I knew. In other ways though it made it harder to read, because I was eager for those bits. Luckily it has been a while since I had watched Pride and Prejudice so while I wasn't exactly surprised by events it did occasionally take reading about them to remind me. The one thing I really expected though was for the novel to be told from Lizzy's point of view and actually that wasn't so. Certainly you saw much into Lizzy's mind, and that's part of the reason that she was such a well constructed character, but you also see a fair bit into Darcy's mind and to a lesser extend the rest of the Bennett family. Really that was what made the novel for me. Yes, the story is great, but has inspired so many stories that it has become predictable. However the was the characters were written so you could almost be another member of the Bennett family was what made it special.

First time reading Jane Austen (I know where have I been right?) and I wanted to see what all the Pride and Prejudice hype was about. In particular the love for Mr Darcy.I’ll be honest, during the first half of the book I really couldn’t see what people were so crazy about. I mean he’s a complete ass! But after The Letter (no my grammar isn’t off, if you’ve read it you know which letter I’m taking about!) I could completely see why so many people love him. I loved that he was so completely enamoured with Elizabeth that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. I think she hit the nail on the head when she said she thought he fell for her because she wasn’t falling all over him like so many other girls. She barely even liked him for most of the book!Elizabeth Bennet is the number one thing I loved about this book. I loved her feisty, witty personality and that she wasn’t prepared to settle for just any man who wanted to marry her. She was also prepared to speak up and defend herself and those she loved even when class dictated she should stay quiet.The writing was good, although I always find with the classics some of the language is a challenge to get your head around (or it is for me anyway!).I liked that although there is clear gender and class differences, Austen challenged those without veering too far from the story and what would have been possible at the time.Some of the supporting characters were great. Jane and Mr Bennet for example. I went back and forth with both these two as there were things I liked and things I didn’t. I liked that Jane was so positive and that she was always looking for the best in people but that same trait made her annoying and naive at times. Mr Bennet was funny and I loved that he could poke fun at Mrs Bennet but I didn’t like his apathetic attitude when he needed to be stronger. I liked Mary, she really didn’t care what anyone thought or wanted from her, she was just happy doing her own thing!On the other hand I really disliked some of the characters (which is fine as I think we are supposed to dislike them). Characters like Mr Collins (what a jumped up little weasel he is) or Mrs Bennet (clearly only cared about appearances and money) or Wickham and Lydia (don’t even get me started on those two!!).Overall it was a great read, particularly the second half of the book, and I’ll definitely be reading more classics after this.