This was the first Jane Austen novel I ever read, and it retains a special place in my heart because of that.

 

Well, not entirely because of that. To be honest, it deserves a special place in my heart entirely on its own merits, and I always debate between this and Northanger Abbey as my favorite of her novels. Here, it is the characters that draw me in.

 

I love Elinor. I really do. I want to be Elinor. She is brilliant and poised and handles even the worst of things with aplomb. She is an artist and a reader and a first-born child who understands what that means and how having younger siblings gives you a certain requirement to look after them as best you can, and all of the sufferings that that can entail. She is a good sister to Marianne, who has a host of problematic behavioral issues (the titular "sensibility" is the cause of most of these), even when Marianne is not a good sister to her.

 

At the same time, I feel for Marianne, I truly do. She goes through an awful lot of trouble because of the way she wears her heart on the sleeve, and while I'm pleased everything came out okay in the end (let's be honest and admit this is not a spoiler--if you are reading Jane Austen for anything other than happy endings of some sort, I'm not sure what you are thinking), it was rough going for quite some time, and much of it was her own fault.

 

I will not pardon the behavior of certain others, of course, who ought to have known better and who certainly have an awful lot to answer for, but Marianne could have perhaps prevented intentionally increasing her own suffering at several points. It was not healthy, and it was not easy to read.

 

The side characters are, as always, remarkably lively and feel like just barely caricatured versions of people that exist even now. I'd buy them living in a small town in the 1800's, and I'd buy them working in an office building with me now. Everyone has a Mrs. Jennings in their life somewhere, I feel quite sure of it.

 

Lucy was intriguing enough, and listening to her instead of reading her gave an interesting interpretation to certain of her phrasings I don't think I had quite understood.

 

I quite enjoyed the ending, though I did find one aspect,

to be a bit out-of-touch. Admittedly, given I was rooting for that anyway, I am okay with assuming that things worked out okay and all was happy in the end. The rest of the ending was definitely satisfactory.

 

I really enjoyed listening to this (and had no clue I had apparently spent half a day doing so...); I'm quite getting into audiobooks, I think, and Juliet Stevenson's Jane Austen readings are a large chunk of the reason why. She does each character with just the right tone that you recognize them, but without ever seeming to over-do it, and she somehow makes pieces of the text pop alive in ways I had not previously considered simply by how she speaks. She catches the tone of the work perfectly and has become my go-to Austen narrator.

 

If you've read any Jane Austen and enjoyed it, make sure to pick this up. If you haven't, then this is a great introduction to her work, whether you read or listen. 

 

This is my favorite Jane Austen novel.

 

People who hear me say that generally look around in surprise to see where the crazy person is. This is not a book that even people who say they've read Jane Austen have read, and it gets very little attention compared to her others (and obviously comparatively no attention versus Pride and Prejudice).

 

The thing is, though, is that it is a whole lot of fun.

 

This is probably Austen at her most mischievous. Here, she is not just tweaking her nose at society and conventions and the kind of people who can get along in them, the kind of fools that are considered to be completely socially acceptable and even superior, as she is in her other novels. Now she's playing with gothic literature as well, and with the effects reading can have without a dose of common sense to restrain it.

 

Catherine Morland is an adorable heroine, and her love of books and reading, and the very real not just pleasure but almost fangirl-excitement she gets from them is something that most bookish girls can probably relate to on some level. She can't put books down, loses sleep over them, wants to read what her friends are reading so they can talk about them, and is always asking for and getting (and even reading!) book recommendations.

 

Her problem is that she also takes what she reads perhaps a little too seriously in her naiveté, and thus does not recognize things happening right under her nose and assumes that life is going to be an awful lot like the books she reads.

 

This is quite possibly also a problem most bookish people can relate to. (Raise your hand if you ever knocked on the back of a cupboard for Narnia? Or spent your 11th birthday miserable without your Hogwarts letter? Is that everyone, then?)

 

I fully admit to not being a fan of many of the more old-school gothic romances. I can't explain why, except that they all seem a little too much for me--suspension of disbelief rarely holds (though I do admit I need to give another try to some of the classics--it's going on the list, honest!). Catherine has the opposite problem. She is positively convinced that haunted abbeys, deranged wives locked in attics, and murder carefully hidden all exist in everyday life, and that she is quite likely to stumble upon them.

 

Given this is an Austen novel, guess how well that goes for her?

 

Watching her grow up and learn is a charming process, and she is definitely on my list for favorite Austen heroines. She always means well, but lets her imagination get away from her. What's not to like?

 

Henry Tilney is my favorite Austen hero. Yes, I mean more than Mr. Darcy, more than Colonel Brandon, even as played by the late and lamented Alan Rickman, more than anyone in any Austen novel at all. He is fantastic, and he makes this book amazing.

 

Henry manages to be clever and funny (his explanation of the similarities between dancing and marriage may be one of my favorite passages in a Jane Austen novel ever) and bookish and loving to his sister and not at all concerned about his vanity or manliness without ever being a fop or a pain or untrustworthy. He couples his bookishness with the common sense that Catherine lacks, and thus goes from being simply fun to read about to being a genuinely good match for her.

 

At this point I am attempting to rein in the fangirling, but it is hard, so please understand my sacrifice.

 

Added to all of this is what would be, in the hands of many other authors, a genuine gothic romance, and a plot that suits it to some degree, though Austen certainly adds her own twists.

 

If you liked any other Jane Austen novel, read this. If you weren't quite sold on Pride and Prejudice, still read this. If you like gothic novels and are willing to poke a bit of fun at them, read this. This is a fantastic book by a genuinely great author, and it's loads of fun besides. A special shout-out to the fantastic narration by Juliet Stevenson, who is always going to be my go-to narrator for Jane Austen, because she manages to get everything pitch-perfect. 

 

This was something I picked up because it looked like a quick, fun read and I was feeling "in-between" other books. It fit the bill.

 

I, like most bookish people my age, I'm sure, was absolutely hooked on R.L. Stine as a kid. I read anything I could get my hands on, and I have a few favorites I read so many times I could recite parts of them.

 

This is not one of those books.

 

It was refreshing going into this knowing the kinds of tropes I'm likely to see and yet not knowing anything about the plot. I picked it up on a complete whim from Oyster, and I had fun with it.

 

I did see the ending coming, but it was extremely close there, which was refreshing. Things were not blatantly telegraphed throughout (or at least I felt that way--your mileage may vary if you are not reading it at two in the morning, admittedly)

 

Amnesia is kind of a fun plot device, though the length to which it was carried seemed a bit much. Not that our main character, Martha, can't remember, but that apparently everyone has been told not to talk about it and has obeyed that decree to such an extent that so much can be hidden from her. It smacked a bit of author intervention, there, but this was such a quick read I was willing to forgive it. Things were not stretched out too far to be believable, given the length of the book.

 

If you're feeling nostalgic or just looking for a quick breather between other books, this should fit the bill quite nicely. 

 

I was a child the first time I read this, and although I couldn't remember the name, it made such an impression on me that I spent a (probably horrifying to the librarian) ridiculous amount of time trying to track it back down after I read it the first time. This was done primarily by informing her it was pink and about witches. I'm sure she was pleased with all that information I could give her, but bless her, she did manage to track it down for me eventually.

 

I have since read it several times, and it remains among my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books, and she is and always has been among my favorite children's authors.

 

This is very much an English boarding school book, not just because it is set there, but because it embraces the good and bad bits of that. The universe is just a little bit different than ours, certainly, but there are quite a few things that remain the same in the way children behave to each other.

 

The main characters (we get the viewpoint of several of the children) are not always the most charming of creatures, and they certainly have their flaws, but it is hard not to root for them given the situations they find themselves in and the universe in which they are forced to reside. Witch burning continues, and being discovered as a witch carries a death sentence. Not a pretty place to grow up when there are notes accusing someone of being a witch.

 

All of the characters do manage to come to life, though even the "heroes" of the story are occasionally annoying. They all feel quite British (at least to a Yankee, so take that with a grain of salt) and the world building is well-handled and makes the story shine.

 

The ending is probably my favorite bit, and I'll not spoil it, just say that it is rather remarkably complex for a book aimed at such young children and introduced me to several new ways of looking at the world when I was young.

 

This was a childhood favorite, and thus I am probably prejudiced, but re-reading it was still a pleasure and it's worth checking this out if you're a Diana Wynne Jones fan or if you think you might want to be. 

 

This was clever and interesting, though it read a lot like an adventure/survival story and an awful lot like an RPG quest.

 

Don't get me wrong--I'm not knocking either of those things. That's part of what made it fun, and it is an extremely short story (as evidence by the extremely short audiobook time), so things never get boring. I've heard one of the other short stories in this series, too, though I have yet to read the actual novels (too many books, too little time!), and this was definitely more adventure-focused than mystery-focused.

 

There is a little bit of both genres here, though. The main characters' by-play is amusing and never detracts from the seriousness of their situation, and it was fun to visit with them and the weird string of characters they collected for this adventure to see if I could figure things out.