Jane Austen July Reads
July Wrap-Up
- Finished: 6
- Started but not finished: 2
- Total pages read: 2,323
- Average rating: 4.5
I had so much fun last month! July was full of Jane Austen and related literature as I participated on Jane Austen July for the first time. Here are short reviews of all the books I read in July, and a quick look forward to the books I’m planning to read in August. All links with * are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Book Title:
Pride and Prejudice (*affiliate link)
Author:
Jane Austen
Genre:
classic
First
published: 1813
262 pages
My rating:
5/5
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Elizabeth Bennet believes in first impressions and is determined to think ill of the rich but extremely proud Mr. Darcy. But appearances can be deceiving, as Elizabeth is forced to acknowledge after Mr. Darcy becomes captivated by her lively manners, bright eyes, and sparkling wit.
This is my favorite Austen novel and the obvious choice for my first Jane Austen July. The humor, the wit, the characters, the historical setting, and the world and the people Jane Austen so accurately describes and at times ridicules are all features that made me fall in love with her writing, and Pride and Prejudice is a perfect example of Austen’s style. You can find the longer review I posted earlier this month here.
Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings by Jane Austen
Love and Freindship by Jane Austen
Book Title:
Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings (*affiliate link)
Author: Jane
Austen
Genre:
classic
Published: 2015
(Penguin Clothbound Classics)
512 pages
My rating:
5/5
“Beware of swoons Dear Laura… A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious; it is an exercise to the Body and if not too violent, is I dare say conducive to Health in its consequences – Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint—”
I had forgotten how funny Jane Austen’s juvenilia could be! This Penguin clothbound edition includes the three notebooks of youthful writings Jane Austen decided merited to be kept and circulated among friends and family, and her early epistolary novel Lady Susan.
In terms of literary merit, they are nowhere near Austen’s main six published novels, but that is to be expected considering that these stories were written when Austen was between twelve and seventeen years of age. It was interesting to see how Jane’s writing style developed from short spoofs making fun of contemporary novelistic conventions to more serious (but not in the sense of less humorous!) endeavours.
Some of my favorites include Henry and Eliza, the eponymous Love and Freindship (the misspelling is intentional and reflects how Jane herself spelled the word), and The History of England, where Austen spoofs Oliver Goldsmith’s famous history book The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II (1771).
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
Book Title:
Jane Austen at Home (*affiliate link)
Author: Lucy
Worsley
Genre: non-fiction,
biography
First
published: 2017
486 pages
My rating:
5/5
My choice for the non-fiction work about Jane Austen or her time was Lucy Worsley’s biography. Worsley is one of my favorite historians, and I love her documentaries. I’ve watched her Jane Austen documentary multiple times, and this July I revisited the documentary again after reading her detailed biography.
I’ve read shorter biographies of Austen before, but they have mostly focused on the main events of Jane’s adulthood and publications. Worsley takes us to a longer journey through Austen’s family history, focusing on how the people around Jane and the houses she lived in and visited affected her writing, both in the sense of where she wrote her books as well as from where she drew inspiration.
Jane Austen herself is a bit elusive – some of her letters survive, but a lot of them were later destroyed by her sister Cassandra. Moreover, Jane isn’t always serious in her letters, so detecting the truth under the smokescreen of humor can be challenging. And to top it all, the Austen family themselves tried to mold Jane’s image to fit the ideal of a delicate lady suitable for Victorian era. That means that Worsley, like all biographers, has to make some conjectures about what Jane “really” thought. Granted, Worsley herself openly admits that her work is subjective (“I know who I want Jane Austen to be”, p. 5), but I still found the host of “I thinks”, “no wonders,” and rhetorical questions a bit jarring. I’m not sure I always agree with Worsley’s reading of the events, but I nonetheless enjoyed this well-researched biography.
The biggest problem I had was trying to remember who was who and how they all related to Jane Austen. As there are quite a few members of the Austen and Leigh families mentioned throughout the book, a family tree and a general timeline of events would have helped immensely to stay on top of all the people mentioned.
Just a heads up if you’re thinking about getting this book: There is a new edition of the book coming later this year to celebrate Jane’s 250th birthday next year. That edition will have a new introduction as well as a chapter on how to visit the houses where Jane lived and stayed.
Much Ado about Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin
Much Ado about Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin
Book Title:
Much Ado about Nada (*affiliate link)
Author:
Uzma Jalaluddin
Genre: Contemporary
romance
Published: June 13, 2023
313 pages
My rating:
4/5
“Nada had tried forgetting. She had buried her secrets and regrets in a small bundle she kept hidden in a floral hatbox inside her closet. It hadn’t helped; even years later, they kept bubbling to the surface, magma that threatened to erupt in a dramatic volcanic explosion, obscuring her emotional atmosphere and making progress impossible.”
Twenty-nine-year-old Nada Syed is stuck: unmarried, living with her parents, and mourning the failure of her start-up company. Her best friend Haleema knows the perfect man for Nada: her fiancé’s brother, Baz. What Haleema doesn’t know is that Nada and Baz have a very long and very secret history.
For a retelling of a Jane Austen book, I chose a contemporary romance and a loose Persuasion retelling Much Ado about Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin. I liked the Muslim representation in this book and felt I learned a lot from East-Asian Muslim cultures. I had some issues with the pacing of the book as well as with how the character development of the main couple was addressed, but overall I found it a nice light summer romance. I posted a longer review earlier, and you can find it here.
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
Book Title:
Belinda (*affiliate link)
Author: Maria
Edgeworth
Genre:
classic
First
published: 1801
544 pages
My rating:
3.5/5
“a woman can always hate a woman more than she can hate a man, unless she has been in love with him – which I never was with poor Lord Delacour.”
Belinda Portman, a seventeen-year-old serious and virtuous girl, is pushed by her match-making aunt to join the household of dissipated Lord and Lady Delacour to secure herself a husband from the London marriage market. She learns that behind Lady Delacour’s wit and riches hides a tragic secret, and meets two eligible bachelors, Clarence Hervey and Mr Vincent.
As this book was part of Jane Austen July, I couldn’t help comparing it to Austen’s works, an unfortunately for Edgeworth, I found Austen a lot superior. The plot of Belinda is disjointed and incohesive. Some plot lines are tied up too early, and some characters are introduced too late considering how important they are to the plot. Belinda herself is too flawless, making her a very passive and boring main character. Lady Delacour’s character, however, I enjoyed immensely, but unfortunately her reformation comes too early in the narrative, and a bit too conveniently.
One of the only things about this book I knew in advance was that it had an interracial marriage, and that was one of the reasons why I was eager to read this book. Imagine my disappointment when the marriage was between two minor characters, took place in one or two paragraphs, and was actually deleted by Edgeworth herself from later editions. Granted, in the time period when Edgeworth wrote, even the passing mention would have caused a scandal, so I’m probably not giving her proper credit here, but I still don’t think that detail deserved to be mentioned in the back cover of the book as a selling point.
This book at times reads like a first draft that would have benefited from further editing. That is exactly what happened later in the publication history of the book. The Oxford World’s Classics edition I read is based on the first edition of the novel, which Edgeworth later edited extensively. Some of the problems in the plot are fixed in the later editions (helpfully noted in the appendix of the Oxford edition), such as making Lady Delacour’s illness less severe and Lord Delacour’s character less dissipated.
Screen Adaptations
Alongside
the Pride and Prejudice reread, I watched my favorite Jane Austen
adaptation, the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice. It’s such a
great series, and I always notice new things when I rewatch it. It was
interesting to note some of the differences between the book and the
adaptation, although this adaptation is the most faithful Austen adaptation
I’ve seen.
The final challenge was to watch a modern screen adaptation, and I chose Clueless for that. It’s such a fun movie, and it will be interesting to revisit it again when I read Emma during some future Jane Austen July.
August Hopefuls
August hopefuls
After Austen filled July, it’s time to get back to other writers and genres. I visited my local library about a week ago and picked up a few interesting books to read in August. The first is Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James. It’s a middle-grade fantasy about a girl who can travel into books. I love that concept (WildWood Revisited by Cinasee Pollett was one of my favorite books last year and features travel into books), and I’m also eager to read a middle-grade book for a chance.
The second book I picked up is A Thousand Heartbeats by Kiera Cass. It’s a standalone Young Adult fantasy, and based on the cover, I wager that romance plays a large role in the story. And the final book I chose from the library is Melanie C’s memoir Who I Am. After reading Geri Halliwell’s If Only, I’m curious to see how Mel C describes her years in Spice Girls.
I’m also starting another Russian classic, and it happens to be Dostoyevsky again. This time I’m reading The Idiot, which is the last of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s major works I have yet to read. I’ve talked before about how Dostoyevsky is a bit of hit or miss for me, so I don’t have huge expectations for the novel, but I do want to know what the book is about.
The last two books I’m planning to read are non-fiction. Continuing with Lucy Worsley, I’m reading her If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, which is based on another of Worsley’s documentary series I’ve watched multiple times. The second is Suomalainen historia by Perttu Immonen, which is about Finnish history in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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