My year of Austen is finished! I rated each book individually and then averaged out the ratings. I've never read Austen before and for the most part I'm glad I did.

I thoroughly enjoyed Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan. Sense and Sensibility was quite good as well. Emma was enjoyable. I felt that Pride and Prejudice was overrated, Mansfield Park was long winded, and Persuasion was a waste of time and paper.

Northanger Abbey 5/5
Lady Susan 4/5
Sense and Sensibility 3/5
Emma 3/5
Pride and Prejudice 3/5
Mansfield Park 3/5
Persuasion 2/5 ( )

For PERSUASION
I read Pride & Prejudice and Emma, but I think this one might be my favourite now just because I love Anne. She’s a different kind of heroin.. she’s quiet, she’s sensible and she’s wonderfully introverted!

Her family are shallow, snobbish extroverts who completely overlook her qualities, but she has a few close treasured friends and those more ‘sensible’ people who do take the effort to speak with Anne one on one soon grow to love and appreciate her.

This is a very difference kind of romance. Anne had been persuaded in her early twenties to give up an engagement to Captain Wentworth, a man she loved and who loved her. At the time his social rank and fortune was too far below hers. Now 8 years later, he has reappeared in her social circle but neither of them can acknowledge the pain of the intervening years or how they may still feel for each other.

She is on the sidelines and passive for most of this book. A true wallflower, she is always observing rather being driver of the action unless the circumstances truly require it. She must be witness to Wentworth being presumed to pursue other ladies, and wonder about his intentions while bearing the pain. They barely speak a word to each other for most of this novel.

Even once they eventually figure things out (in perhaps the most introvert way possible, and I loved it!) we come to a perfectly reasonable, drama free happy ending!

I did often find this challenging to read (I don’t remember other Austen books being this hard on the sentence structure, but it has been many years!). I had to reread paragraphs at times to make sense of what was going on. But it was worth the struggle because I just loved Anne and Wentworth, this story makes me feel seen as an introverted wallflower. ( )

Anthology of Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) revealing current restrictive female lives and changing idea of marriage based on rational love and companionship amidst genuine characters and attention to social detail. Lady Susan (1794-1805) first work, imitative and juvenile but signs of her future voice. Northanger Abbey (1798-1803) quasi-satiric look at Gothic romance with insightful paen to good novels ("only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effustions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.") but not yet hanging together as well as later novels. Sense & Sensibility (1811): good but prefered the Emma Thompason movie :)

Pride & Prejudice, the second best Austen novel (1813), develops the modern romantic male lead as the arrogant proud form who falls in love despite himself: "A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." Most famous Austen line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in posession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Mansfield Park (1814) features Fanny Price, morally superior but rather unengaging, strong only in a passive sense; excellent job showing duality of characters, also uses town/country duality: "for sunshine appeared to her a totally different think in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare, a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaity in sunshine in a town." (Did Hemingway read Austen?) Beautiful description of May: " Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state, when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually give to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination." Miss Crawford as the cold, modern woman of a changing morality: "So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! --No reluctance, no horror, no feminine--shall I say? no modest loathings!--This is what the world does." Fanny remains the same while other characters change, re Tom Bertram ("He had suffered, and he had learned to think, two advantages that he had never known before") or Sir Henry's views on his parenting deficiency ("They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required tob ring it into daily practise.")

Emma (1815) reverse of the male hero on P&P sees independent heroine who must learn to better understand those around her, also more modern as a precursor to later 19C social commentary novels of Trollope and Eliot. Persuasion (posthumous 1817) finest work, best written and laid out; portrays glance of the decline of power in landed nobility as fortunes wane just as the rising middle class are beginning a meritocracy through certain chosen professions (e.g. military). The mature character of Anne Eliot: "She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural result of an unnatural beginning....Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are, by some, conformtable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments...". Rich, complex and believable characters plus good interpersonal exchange and social mirror make up for somewhat contrived plots and best-of-all-possible-worlds endings. ( )

What hasn't been said about Jane Austen? Not only is she arguably the greatest female writer of all time, she is also arguably one of the greatest writers of all time. She is in the same status as Shakespeare and Dickens. Chances are you've heard her name if you are a reader. I still think she is important to English literature as well as the language.

I was never really fond of Austen before reading her books. For the longest time I thought she was either this snooty bitchy writer or she was chick-lit that attracted hopeless romantics. After watching Becoming Jane and actually reading her books, I was proven wrong. I fell in love with Austen's writing. She's not my favorite author, but I now have a better understanding of her works. Kind of proves the point that you shouldn't have critical thoughts about authors you've never read before. Sometimes you're right, but most of the time you are wrong.

One thing I've kept saying while reading this massive book was about Austen's writing. I was kind of blown away by it all. She can write. Her vocabulary is quite impressive. It's as if she is carefully picking the words she writes rather than writing a book with a silly plot that doesn't make any sense. It's also impressive that she was a bestseller at her time, let alone being a woman writer. Maybe sometime in the distant future I'll have to reread this book again.

My Top 7 (There are only 7 books in this collection by the way)
1. Northanger Abby
2. Emma
3. Pride and Prejudice
4. Mansfield Park
5. Persuasion
6. Sense and Sensibility
7. Lady Susan

NOTE: I wrote some individual reviews of each book if you are interested on there pages. ( )

Having read all of these several times before, I cannot say there is any surprise...but by heaven there is joy...in them. No one paints her time with so much style and realism as Austen. She is the rarest of storytellers, whose language alone delights. ( )