Pride and Prejudice

This is the second Jane Austen book I've read, the first's being Emma back in 1995. I did start Pride and Prejudice once, but didn't get very far.

This time it was the audiobook, mostly listened to on a family journey in the car while the kids watched movies on their iOS devices. It was perfect for that. My daughter (10) had expressed an interest in listening to it with us, but it didn't last long and the lure of a movie on dad's new iPhone soon won the day.

I'm currently two-thirds of the way through my favourite book, which is Grapes of Wrath, so it's interesting to compare two vastly different novels, both of which are considered classics. One feeds my soul and the other entertains.

I enjoyed the language and whimsical style of P&P, but the plot not so much. It seems, when compared with Steinbeck, rather shallow in terms of character development and plot and I found it difficult to care about any of the characters at all. They all seem so vacuously self-centred and vain, but perhaps that's what gives the novel its charm. I should maybe try Emma again and see how I feel about that now that I have 20 more years of life experience than I did when I read it. But perhaps not, when there are so many other novels in queue. I think I'm pretty much done with Jane Austen.