Book notes: Pride and Prejudice

By Jane Austen.

We visited some of the countryside to the West of London this summer. We sought some classic English literature to compliment the trip. I was in the middle of reading this when we visited Stourhead, and it improved the experience.

Scoring:

• Axe for the frozen sea: 10/10.
• Page count: 350, effective page count: 300.

It’s been 5 months after reading the book and writing up notes. You really do get suboptimal notes this way.

Thoughts:

• Great book! It stands the test of time for entertainment. My worries of a slogging through old-timey, flowery prose never happened.
• A hallmark of a great book for me is witty banter. Elizabeth is one of the best!
• (Spoiler) Is there a better man than Mr. Darcy? It’s nice to have strong male role models, rather than bumbling comic relief. Though in this case he may have set the bar uncomfortably high.
• There’s a great “dad moment” where he says if Elizabeth refuses the guy’s marriage offer she will lose a mother, but if she does marries him she will lose a father. So funny.
• It’s a classic for a reason. This has to make everyone’s lifetime list.