I finished reading it yesterday and AHHHHHHH!!!!! Yk?

I still haven't fully processed everything and such. I suck at stating things I liked/disliked because my memory is like a sieve and all the details fall through the holes. BUT I loved that characters (most of them, anyway) - especially Lizzy, Darcy, Jane, Mr and Mrs Bennet, and Mary! I have a soft spot for film version of Mary. And the plot and style of writing were so engaging!

I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO SAY!!!!! I will probably need to come back here several times to fully convey everything that I feel.

So, to get it out of the way, I saw the 2005 movie before reading the book. It meant that I knew certain plot points were going to happen eventually, and it also meant that Elizabeth == Keira Knightley, Jane == Rosamund Pike, and Mr. Funnyman Bennet == Donald Sutherland. Weirdly enough, I pictured Mr. Darcy as someone I know IRL but I think that's a conversation I need to have with myself and not here. ANYWAY.

I felt so full of feels throughout this entire book?? I didn't really expect that, despite the book's reputation and fame. As a non-native English speaker, it was difficult to get into at first but the challenge of reading it and understanding was way too fun to pass up and I think I ended up enjoying it more because I had to really concentrate and focus on every word. Editing note: Being somewhat of a recovering anglophile, this book spoke to me on many levels in that regard too.

I did notice that my interest in the book's plot picked up when Elizabeth went to visit Charlotte after her marriage to Mr. Collins, likely because of two reasons: 1. Mr. Darcy. My word. MR. DARCY. !!!!! What a guy, what a presence, what a character *__* and 2. I really disliked Mrs. Bennet. I feel secondhand embarrassment very easily, I'm the one who has to hide her face when watching a movie and someone does something even mildly shameful onscreen, I can't handle it. Reading through Mrs. Bennet's antics (and Lydia's too after she married Wickham, big yike) was very, very painful for me. VERY painful. So I think that, at any point when Elizabeth and the narrative were away from Longbourn, I was very happy.

AND !!!! THE END. THE WHOLE ENDING SEGMENT. The way Mr. Darcy admitted to being horrible, the way Elizabeth admitted to judging him throughout the second half of the novel?? I LOVE. I LOVE IT. Their meeting at Pemberley made me SQUEAL, their walk made me SQUEAL, THEIR RELAXED AND PLAYFUL CONVERSATION??? S Q U E A L.

I have so much more to say but this is already way too long I'm sorry D:

MOVIE MARY *heart eyes* I love her so much. Generally, the 2005 representations are all so very endearing (I did not know that it was both Talulah Riley AND Carey Mulligan's first theatrical releases, very cool fun fact) and iirc, Mrs. Bennet was very toned down in the movie which I now appreciate after reading the book.

I'm gonna go watch Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy now. I'm very excited. I'LL BE BACK.

I'm gonna come back soon with MORE THOUGHTS and a reply to you, Dani, but first!

I'm curious to know how y'all - especially people who don't live in England - pronounced the names of places in the book. English is notorious for having pronunciations that seem to make little sense. Sooooooo how did you all pronounce: Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Warwick, Birmingham?

Little aside. I loved the inclusion of places like Epsom, Clapham, Chatsworth, Matlock and the Peaks because they're all places I've been to!

OKAY. Okay. I finished the book yesterday and I know I should've posted here while the memory is fresh, but I needed more time to digest the brilliance of Jane Austen and to think of something worth posting that isn't only a simple *YELLS*

With that said, I'll start by saying this: *YELLS*

That's all

Kidding.

Before I decided to read this book for the challenge, I had already watched the 2005 film with my lovely wife—the starter of this equally lovely thread—early this year. I knew what to expect in the book because of this. The movie was GREAT and, like Dani, everyone in the book already had a face to me. Keira was definitely Lizzy, and Rosamund was Jane, and so on. Everyone except Darcy, though, I imagined someone else. Even then, it's not an actual person but rather a vague idea or description? Like a blurry visual of an attractive species of man. Look, fam, idk how to explain I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND.

ALSO, IT IS VERY TRUE that Mrs. Bennet was toned down in the movie. In the book? Omg. I wanted her to shut up in many, many occasions.

Let's go back to the real deal. The book was really heavy for me, especially the first half. I was thrown off by the style because P&P was the first classic that I really attempted and wanted to read (as opposed to that one time I had to read Gulliver's Travels for class many years ago because I was required to, and the only thing I remember from the book is Liliput wenk wonk). I struggled so much, it took me 29 days to finish this book and that's reaaaally slow for someone who can blaze through a book in a single weekend. English isn't my first language either, and so my vocabulary was squeezed all throughout. I was frustrating because I had to check the definitions of other words once in a while and idk, man, I was so tempted to put it down. I am GLAD I didn't though, because I wouldn't have appreciated classics as much as I do now ;___; Aside from the style, I was always so LKSDHFJKS at the time jumps??? One moment, it's a nice June afternoon in Longbourn and the next time, MAAM IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS HELLO MICHAELMAS. This might be wrong, I did not crosscheck the dates that I used as examples but you get it! Like, yikes??? Parkour is real. I know I have wonky sense of time myself, but this brought things to another level lmasifdjg

All these struggles, I had eventually overcome. And GLADLY so. I agree with Dani, that everything became much more interesting to me after Charlotte Lucas married Mr. Collins. The pacing from there on was right for me, after all my difficulties to adjust to the writing, and the plot was just SO MUCH MORE INTRIGUING because everything just starts messing around after that. From Lizzy staying with the Gardiners, to the unexpected meeting between Lizzy and Darcy in the Pemberley, to Lydia's running away with Wickham, to Lizzy opening up to Darcy about how she feels about Lydia wanting to elope with Wickham (!!!!!!!!!! MAAM), to Lady Catherine deciding to just waltz into Longbourn to stop Lizzy from wanting to marry Darcy, to LIZZY standing up to Lady Catherine (WE STAN!!!) to jUST EVERYTHING AFTER THAT. Also??? Can I just say, the LAST sentence of the book gave me a lot of uwus? It was a lovely way to end it, like neatly wrapping a bow around a present My most reverent salutes to the Gardiners, the true MVPs.

As someone who majors in sociology—ya heard that? I'm a #nerd—I genuinely think this was such a great book considering the conditions in which Austen lived and experienced the world. I love the strong female characters in this book, especially knowing that it was written in a time when women were expected to behave in a certain way. But that's for another time, and I've created a monster post.

I'll stop myself now. Thank you if you've read up to this point!!!

Finis

Uhhhh HAHA I'm not sure I pronounce it right but I read —shire like it rhymes with choir

So if you've finished the book and you're familiar with the movies AND you've read any one of the dozens of sequels and TV shows like Lost in Austen and Austenland (all good, all good, let's chat, I'm a fan), THEN HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? I present to you, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A modern retelling through YouTube vlogs that is so well executed and so charming and so CLEVER. Ugh. Please watch this if you love P&P.

okay this post ended up a lot bigger than i wanted it to, my apologies

HELLO. I finished the book last night and I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now, but I want to post here with my thoughts from last night before I forget them as that tends to happen to me immediately after finishing a book.

So I'm gonna be real honest here in saying that I did NOT think I would like this book. I read it for a combination of reasons despite being adamant in the fact that I would hate it. Reasons include but are not limited to: Ern suggesting it under the platonic love book suggestions thread and wanting to knock that prompt out before the end of the month, everyone their mum and pet cow have read it, and also one of my characters (Nina Castillo) is currently reading it and trying to RP a character that is reading a book that you have not once touched was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

All of that being said, I loved it.

Sometimes I take issue with the classics because they're often drenched in description and imagery and take years to say something simple. Which, I now realize is how I tell stories to people LOL. BUT. my attention span can't handle pages of description and I fall asleep trying to sift through it. I also knew P&P to be a romance, and romance has never interested me much. BUT. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that there was very little unnecessary description. Every sentence felt intentional and the book was fast-paced compared to what I was expecting.

My only complaint was the dialogue was a little hard to sift through because I would be three pages into a chapter and forget who was talking, so I'd have to go back and reread all of those pages. But truthfully? This isn't really a complaint because going back to reread often helped me figure out what was going on. Especially because when I'm reading I sometimes I have terrible habit of jumping past key sentences to get to the bottom of the page. So with rereading throughout I was really able to sift through alllllll of it.

I won't lie though, at first I definitely would have to read the sparknotes summary of the chapters I read the day before in order to continue reading the next day. Once I got more acclimated to Austen's style of writing it became much easier though, which was NICE because it meant I grew.

Anyway. Mr. Darcy is probably my fave, followed by Mr. Bennet, followed by Jane, followed by Elizabeth. I think Miss Bingley is a major butthead and I'm not a fan of Mrs. Bennet and I didn't dislike Lydia so much as I though she was a source of good entertainment. Not a Mary fan though.

I haven't seen the movie so I GOTTA DO THAT now.

HAHAHA you told me this when we were zooming and I was????? Not understanding because the Mr. Darcy parts hadn't happened yet LOLOLOL. But now I understand why your interest peaked here. I also had mad major second hand embarrassment from Mrs. Bennet and also found myself enjoying the times away from Longbourn much more than when they were there.

I want this paragraph framed.

Gardiners were ACTUALLY the true MVPs I second this notion. Bruh. Lady Catherine had some audacity. I was big eye roll at her. It gave me a lot of pleasure when Lizzy stood up for herself. If it wasn't 2 in the morning, I would've yelled in celebration of that pwn. Also. Lydia running away with Wickham was the biggest slap in the face ever???? I did ??? not??? see that??? coming???

I think that was another point of big confusion for me a first? Because it went from being such a big disgrace to all the sudden? okay? Which, I now understand because Mr. Darcy stepped in and did his thing. But when I say I had to read those pages 5 times. I mean. I had to read those pages 5 times. And then sparknotes it. Because. It happened so quickly, my head hurt.
So? Honestly? I think I just made up my own version of these names because they were so long and I didn't want to spend too much time trying to read them. So. I probably pronounced everything wrong.

It was also really difficult for me to keep track of where people lived and what everything was called and I didn't realize it while reading, but now that I think about it... It must just be because everything was so unfamiliar to me that keeping track wasn't something my brain was naturally doing. Which is very unfortunate because if I want to describe a part of the book I won't be able to do it by saying where they were, but rather will have to name the characters and the scene itself.

I'M GONNA ADD THIS TO MY BOOKMARKS
because i think my next priority has to be the movies. and then. this.