I'm probably ruined for any further literary criticism at this point. This book was so much fun, and Rodi's analysis laced with so many quips and jokes and sass, I doubt I'll ever have any patience for staid, thoughtful, academically minded critiques.

I say "Rodi's analysis" but that's probably building the lily a bit. Rodi is an author (whose work I've never read), and a man who loves Jane Austen's work. Not because it's romantic, but because it is absolutely everything but romantic. He's a true fan of her writing, her satire, her wit, her ability to create characters that are deeply flawed and darkly funny. He maintains that the prevailing viewpoint that Austen is a writer of romances is the fault of Hollywood and the BBC, who don't know who to treat her books as the dark comedies they are, and fall back, instead, on the relationships.

Volume 2 covers Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and he goes through each book in detail, using a lot of quotes and discussing, in detail, what's going on in the stories, as if he's sitting with friends in a version of a bitch and stitch gathering. Only without the swooning over Colin Firth's wet t-shirt contest of one. There's no academic speak here and quite a few moments where I laughed out loud.

The thing is, Rodi's correct: when you really, deeply read Austen, she's not even a little bit romantic. She has no patience for sentiment, or affection, or weddings. I knew there was a reason I adored her books. For Austen, the more romantic a character, the bigger fool she made of them, and even her heroines aren't allowed to be great. Good, but not great; not flawless in the least, just the least flawed in a cast of fools, villains and cads.

I fully recognise that I enjoy Rodi's take on things because it's a form of confirmation bias, but I don't care. I've ordered the first volume, covering S&S, P&P and Mansfield Park, and I look forward to delving into those with him. ( )

Rodi's snarky comments make this a modern day condensed versions of Austen's novels that is fun to read.

I enjoyed his rewritten condensed version, but toward the end, I got tired of the modern day humor and was looking forward to finishing this book. As I read these other books about Jane Austen and her works, II keep wanting to get back to reading what she wrote rather than what someone else wrote about her/it.

I was quite struck that he missed (or ignored) the social commentary about slavery. This came to my attention when I saw the slave word in Emma. His volume 1 Mansfield Park section missed it also. Rodi is not providing an analysis; Instead, he translates them into a condensed version in modern idiom with extended vocabulary thrown is as a bonus. I made a list of new words as I went along.

"A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive because of any ethical reason it does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would kill it. It survived because it is a source of pleasure and because the passionate few can no more neglect it then a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse "the right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them …"

"Nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern wrks. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive Generations; whereas, with Classics, which have been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. Your taste has to pass before the bar of the classics. That is the point. If you differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no judge is authoritative to decide your taste is unformed. It needs guidance and it needs authoritative guidance."
Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: How to Form It, as quoted by S. I. Hayakawa in Language in Thought & Action, 4th Ed, p 139-140 ( )

I started reading Robert Rodi's 'Bitch in a Bonnet' blog when I was in my first passion for Emma, and desperate for any, shall I say, extra-curricular material on Austen's novel. Volume 2 contains the whole 'Bitch notes' in one handy run, plus Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Maybe Rodi can persuade me to actually read the latter novel for the first time!

I love 'Bitch in a Bonnet' because Rodi really gets Austen - and, more importantly, Emma Woodhouse, who he describes as 'everything Mansfield Park's Fanny Price is not'. Apart from wanting to read more about the servants, and bemoaning Austen's 'undemocratic' focus on the well-to-do - I would love to know if actually reading Longbourn cured him of that politically correct delusion - Rodi loves Emma, is 'no Fairfax fan', likening the saintly Jane to Fanny Price, and absolutely adores how forthright and downright vicious on occasion Jane Austen can be. He is suitably derisive of the 'harps and violins crap' that Hollywood shoehorns into Austen adaptations (including the famous nightshirt scene tacked onto the end of the 2005 P+P for American audiences), and bemoans that most readers 'see only the veneer in Austen - the Regency dress, the gently rolling hills, the carriages and furniture'. Austen is not a romantic, he claims, and that is why I love her - and Bitch in a Bonnet! Perfect for those readers scared by the language and sheer bulk of novels like Emma - don't bother with Gwyneth Paltrow's take on the character, read this snarky summary instead! ( )