View original postI recently bought Jane Austen's collected novels, and profited from the occasion to read the two I hadn't read yet, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Both have their good moments, though I can kind of understand why neither has reached the same popularity as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility or Emma.
View original postI just now came across <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2013/04/jane_austen_books_ranked_and_reconsidered_from_emma_to_persuasion.html">an article</a> on how Austen's novels stack up against each other, which makes a few interesting points, and argues, fairly successfully I think, that Persuasion is rather overrated for various reasons. The board being as dead as it is, and since just about everybody has read at least some Austen novels (yes, do feel free to prove me wrong), I figured arguing which ones are best could make for some interesting discussion and/or be fun. Hopefully. Conveniently, the author also shared her <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2013/04/jane_austen_novels_from_best_to_worst_plus_her_best_lines.html">own ranking</a>.
View original postI'll add some questions just for the hell of it, although experience has taught me there's some risk in that as people have a tendency of strictly replying to the questions and nothing else when I do that. Consider this an invitation to rant about whatever you like in your replies, and to ignore whichever questions aren't interesting.
View original post1) Which is your favourite Austen novel? Why?
I don't really remember the plots well. I want to say Persuasion, though.
View original post2) Least favourite? Why? Or just rank the lot of them if you feel like it.
They all run together for me this far out, as I only read them once and thought they were amusing but not brilliant.
View original post3) What do you think of the immense amount of attention Austen and her novels get? Entirely deserved, wildly overrated, somewhere inbetween?
Don't have much of an opinion on it.
View original post4) Favourite character? Least favourite?
Don't remember the characters, to be honest.
View original post5) Favourite TV or movie adaptation, besides the obvious answer (just to keep things interesting)?
Haven't watched any adaptations.
View original post6) What do you make of the recent craze involving the adaptation of Austen novels with various kinds of monsters added?
Stupid.
View original post7) What do you think explains the enduring popularity of these works, when so many other 19th and 20th century writers (to say nothing of older ones) have been almost completely forgotten?
What "sticks" is an odd thing to predict.
View original post8) Do you think of Austen as a conservative and/or a prude, or do you feel that by the standards of her time she could be considered progressive? Why (not)?
A bit of both, if I recall. But she certainly was no Henry Fielding 
View original post9) Any other observations you'd care to make on this or any however tangentially related topic?
I wonder if Austen is the epitome of "white woman" literature
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
/Survey: Jane Austen
- 02/07/2013 08:51:08 PM
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Strangely enough, I'm that person who has never read Austen.
- 02/07/2013 09:16:23 PM
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Then I guess the question becomes which one to recommend to you, eh?
- 02/07/2013 09:43:02 PM
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- 02/07/2013 09:43:02 PM
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I read them something like 17-20 years ago
- 03/07/2013 07:09:20 PM
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