#start-her-up

[fit-intelligence]

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Review by Katherine.

How many stars do you rate the book? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  (5 out of five)

How many stars do you rate the author? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  (5 out of five)

What is your favorite quote? Oh, too many.

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. 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."

(When Darcy was asked when he began to love Elizabeth) "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that it had begun."

Do you like the ending? What would you change about it? The ending is as all Austen endings are -- perfectly wrapped up, with all ends tucked away, everything neat and tidy. Beautiful, of course. I'd change nothing.

Any life lessons learned? Life lessons, perhaps not. But history lessons? Of course. 

Final thoughts? Austen is an excellent storyteller, quite adept at building up her work into a beautiful ending. No part of the novel is useless -- as the reader continues, each piece begins to fall into place and the story truly does "unfold".

One thing I love about Jane Austen is that she never takes herself too seriously, yet she clearly loves her characters, even when they are behaving idiotically. She seems to have had a great eye for the ridiculous in people and society, but not a bitter, hateful one. Her work is very "tell it like it is" -- or in her case, was. Austen clearly saw the desperation and despair of the social position of the women of her time: Unable to work, or even to inherit, they had to marry, and marry well, or live in poverty.

Anyone who reads and enjoy Austen would do well, I think, to take the next step into the world of literary criticism and come to understand the underpinnings of her work. This book may seem dry to the modern reader who does not have a feel for the period in which it was written -- because in many ways, understanding why something is funny, just how scandalous a situation was, and what a carriage ride is a metaphor for can greatly enrich the experience of Austen's work.

I have written entire essays on her work, so I'll not endeavour to do so right now. You're lucky I'm not reviewing Persuasion right now, is all I'm saying. :D

[fit-intelligence]

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

review by Katherine.

How many stars do you rate the book? ☆ ☆ ☆  (3 out of five)

How many stars do you rate the author? ☆ ☆  (2 out of five)

What is your favorite quote? I don't have one because I didn't enjoy it that much.

Do you like the ending? What would you change about it? The ending is fine as it is, I suppose. I did not particularly like or dislike it. I think some may find it unfulfilling.

Any life lessons learned? Nope!

Final thoughts?  This book is not terrible. I did not hate it. In fact, had I never read any dystopian fiction before, I would likely have enjoyed this a lot more. In my opinion, anyone who has read any Philip K. Dick or Octavia Butler will not be impressed by this series, let alone this book.

It's pretty much a teen mash-up of Battle Royale, A Long Walk, The Running Man, and in terms of the romance...well. It is painfully contrived. The best thing I can say about this book is that it was entertaining and well-paced -- in this it succeeded far more with me than its sequels, which I found dull and hard to finish.

IF you read this book and found it unlike anything you'd ever read and loved it, great! Then I encourage you to go on to read the above titles mentioned and to look into Butler or Dick's work. Or try on a little of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or perhaps my beloved William Gibson's Neuromancer, arguably one of the most influential dystopian science fiction books in modern history. 

[fit-intelligence]

Diary of a Provincial Lady by start-her-up (Kate/zombizombi)

This is December read, but I started late and was a slow reader. Sorry! But better late than never, am I right?

How many stars do you rate the book? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (4 out of five)

How many stars do you rate the author? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (5 out of five)

What is your favorite quote? “Am sorry to note that abuse and condemnation of a common acquaintance often constitutes very strong bond of union between otherwise uncongenial spirits.”

Do you like the ending? What would you change about it? One of the beauties of the epistolary novel is, in my opinion, that the reader does not come away from the book wishing it were different.

Any life lessons learned? Provincial Lady is not quite a lesson-teaching book. If anything, the only lesson to come away with is that many of us are more alike than we might ever suspect -- even through the ages and passage of time. For its time, it's quite subversive, with the Provincial Lady chafing against the restrictions placed on her by her gender and position. Delafield displays a marvelous ear for dialogue and a deft sense of the social requirements of 1930s Britain.

Final thoughts? It is evident why Delafield's work, published in the 1930s, has enjoyed an enduring popularity and the prestige of being able to say that it has never been out of print. It is hilariously done, the style is easy to read and vivacious, and the snapshot of 1930s life is irresistible. This is a novel in the epistolary style, which I'll explain because I love to explain things -- this means it's written as a series of documents, traditionally letters. Diary is obviously in a diary format, and as such it falls into the epistolary category. I have a weakness for epistolary novels because I find the inner thoughts of characters deeply interesting and because often the epistolary form lends itself to a greater sense of realism for the reader. Diary is a fictional diary (though largely autobiographical), not an actual one, but the reader might come away from the book feeling as though the Provincial Lady, her husband Robert, her children and neighbors, et al, are real persons.