My Plan, Evil or Otherwise

Since the dawn of Junior High, numerous members of my sex have badgered, harassed and nagged me about reading the works of Jane Austen, namely Pride and Prejudice. After caving to peer pressure and reading the novel twice, I came to the conclusion that it is a total piece of crap.

OK, OK, that might be a bit harsh. After all Stephanie Meyer has clearly set the bar pretty high as far as crap is concerned, and Elizabeth Bennett is definitely no Bella. However, my point is that Pride and Prejudice is, in my humble opinion, completely overrated. It's not that I have poor taste in literature. My favorite book of all time is Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which many of my lofty friends (Read: pretentious bastards) have described as the creepy version of anything Austen. To be sure, I have an odd penchant for dry classic literature, favoring Bronte, James and Tennyson over, well, anything else.

So why did Austen leave such a bad taste in my mouth? Pride and Prejudice wasn't a bad book, per se, it just wasn't good. It sits somewhere in a weird literary purgatory, along with My Antonia, Lolita, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and anything written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I realize that most people do not agree with me on this, but I really couldn't care less.

Now, to come to my point: I have decided to spend this summer reading each of Austen's six novels (re-reading Pride and Prejudice, of course) in an effort to finally understand what all the fuss is about. I will read them systematically, taking notes on each and then blogging my feelings about them. I am 99% sure that no one will read this blog (and that any poor soul who does will be driven insane by the incessant ramblings of a crazed housewife), but writing about my feelings on these six books in a location that someone could actually access will hold me accountable.

So tomorrow I will be off to purchase the collected novels of Jane Austen, something I thought that I would never do. Please wish me good luck as I plow my way through the novels. I truly hope that I will be enlightened and that this time Austen will show me what I have been missing.