A second 2017 classic read

blacbird

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Early in the year I posted my 2017 classic novel read thread, asking for recommendations. Someone, I disremember who just now, suggested Villette by Charlotte Brontë, which I read, and enjoyed. Now, after mid-year, I got me a hankerin' to read another, and I'm thinking Austen. I haven't read any of Austen's half-dozen novels, and everybody, it seems, is in love with P&P, but I'm a cantankerous sort, and think I'll do one of the others. Mansfield Park, maybe. Comments from anyone who's read it?

caw
 
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Siri Kirpal

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I liked Nothanger (sp?) Abbey. I liked Mansfield Park too. Persuasion struck me as elegiac, and I believe it was written while Austen was dying. I couldn't get into Emma--too much tell, too little show for too long.

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Siri Kirpal
 

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Emma, because I like unreliable narrators

Emma is a great pairing/follow-up to Villette. I love what Austen (in a letter) wrote about Emma, before she'd really started the novel:

I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.

And then the first sentence of Emmal, not nearly as famous as Pride and Prejudice, but just as memorable in my mind:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich.

It's a complicated novel, with some really interesting choices by Austen.
 

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Persuasion also good (thumbs up emoticon)

Yes, as is Sense and Sensibility. But Northanger always makes me laugh, even after teaching it some ten or so times.