Emma

just watch clueless and read northanger abbey.

i'm kidding, emma's a fun read too, and lots more goes on in it than the other two works. however, upon second read as an adult, i didn't enjoy this as much as i did when i was younger and had read this the first time. it wasn't disappointing per se, but i certainly felt differently towards each character this time around than i had at first. however, this interfered only slightly with my enjoyment of the book.

reading this with cynical goggles might help. also, if you like reading books where you hate literally every character, this becomes more entertaining.

Ok I see why it's a classic and has so many adaptations. It was fun and ridiculous. Still, I hope that's not what life was really like in that timeperiod, because people being fixated on the smallest thing and gossiping about it forever sounds like hell.

In other words... good entertainment, but hopefully no reflection of real life.

It's among Jane's longest novels, and I confess I felt the wordcount. I found most of it delightful, but sometimes a fun element (silly hypochondria, planning a ball) gets too repetitive or drawn out, and it loses momentum. This is entertaining and it's interesting to have an Austen hero who's rich and socially dominant - this is well worth reading! I just don't think it's in my “read every 1-2 years” pile.

One sentence synopsis... Precocious young Emma Woodhouse's delusions of her own match-making abilities lead to a series of comic, romantic misadventures. .

Read it if you like... rom-com books like “To All The Boys I've Loved Before” or modern reimagining like “Clueless”. .

Dream casting... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qsOwj0PR5Sk

Everything that Miss Bates said should have been cut down by 3/4. I understand that her character is irritatingly longwinded, and to show is better writing than to tell, but come on! By the end I was only reading a sentence or two of Miss Bates's page-long-or-more monologues, and then moving on; her words contained no useful content, and were merely there to demonstrate the high level of kindness and tolerance of Jane Fairfax et al.

For that matter, most of Emma's internal monologues could have been trimmed quite a bit too and not suffered for it.

I found the sudden rift between Emma and Harriet, after Harriet tells Emma that she has a thing for Mr. Knightley, a little odd. Okay, Emma is appalled at the idea of those two getting married because Harriet is in a lower caste, and because Emma is discovering she herself loves Knightley. But they were very good friends, spending every day together, and now after that single talk they are both done with each other? And Emma actually putting it in writing that they shouldn't hang out anymore?That type of behavior might fit with girls of 13 or 14, but not grown women. I thought it was a little slapdash.

I liked “Pride and Prejudice” quite a bit, and had expected to like “Emma” just as much, but the former had much tighter (better) writing. The flowery language of the time was really let loose in “Emma” and I think it suffers because of it. This is more a 2.5 star book, but skipping/skimming over vast chunks of monologues improves the flow of the story and nudges this up to 3 stars.

This was the fourth of Austen's novels that I read. Though almost as long as Mansfield Park, it's slightly more readable and relatable. This book strays from the flock of Austen's straightforward romance by the protagonist's declaration in the first chapter that she doesn't intend to marry, ever.

Emma prides herself in being a masterful matchmaker. Emma prides herself in being perfection personified. In fact she takes up the task of  molding Harriet Smith, an illegitimate young girl with no connexions atleast to a small degree to the likeness of herself.

Enter Jane Fairfax. She is beautiful and accomplished. She had no governess like Emma had to guide her through her youth. Yet her musical skills surpassed Emma. Despite being poor, she was better than Emma and the latter couldn't help but acknowledge that. The only fault in Jane Fairfax that could be found was that she is ‘reserved.' Considering how people in this book can't stop talking their head off?, Jane must be one of the few sane people in the book. If written from Jane's point of view, this would have been like any other romance novel.

The Hartfield residence where Emma lives with her insanely hypochondriac father Mr. Woodhouse (reminiscent of Lady Bertram from Mansfield Park), is at a walkable distance from Bates' residence (where Jane Fairfax lives) and Donwell Abbey.

Mr. Knightley lives at Donwell Abbey. He provides healthy criticism for Emma's shenanigans. He is normal, hence boring.
Readers entertainment depends on Miss Bates, there are pages of conversation with only her in it.

And Mrs Elton who's so full of herself, the fact that something doesn't concern her is incomprehensible to her. Of course everything is about her, depends upon her, cannot exist without her, would crumble without her.

Emma meddles in the natural course of events pertaining to people's relationships resulting in, umm.. complications.
I vaguely remember writing this in some other review, but it is appropriate here too.
If not for the uncommon combination of beauty and precision in writing, unique to Austen, this story would look like nothing other than a soap opera. Jealousy, check. Matchmaking, check. People poking their nose in affairs not theirs, check. Bad communication prolonging the story, check.


The book is looong, and it requires some serious dedication to finish it. The story and characters are not worth the time and effort they demand. So unless you are hell bent on reading all of Austen's books, you'd better skip this.

I am surprised how much I did not like this story since I did like [b:Pride and Prejustice Sense and Sensibility 23148578 Pride and Prejustice Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 2495564].

Classics are tough for me to follow. I always get about halfway through and see if there is a movie adaptation I can watch so I have a better understanding of what's happening before finishing the book. When I looked up this one and saw that Clueless was a loose adaptation the whole book clicked for me. Mr. Knightly is one of my favorite Austen male leads. I thought it was interesting that the somewhat vapid and bubbly character that Austen usually writes as a sister or side character was the main character for this book. Emma was annoying, but her love for Harriet was beautiful.

Austen writes insufferable characters well, but it does mean spending a lot of time with insufferable characters. And there are a lot of them in Emma, including the main character. I had understood from 'the zeitgeist' that Emma was a 'matchmaker' but that's not really true: she's a meddler. A matchmaker puts people together successfully; Emma just interferes.

It's also unclear quite why Emma is considered to be so eligible. Everyone praises her beauty but they also seem to think she is clever, whereas she comes across more supercilious. Maybe it's just her fortune.

Otherwise it's the usual plot - will they/won't they in bonnets and carriages. I found I didn't really care for the happiness of any of them.

It's official: I'm a Jane Austen fan.

I didn't plan it. I tried to avoid it, honestly. I read P&P and S&S long ago, in a whirl of trying to knock off a couple of must-reads, without knowing what all the JA fuss was about. This month, I was simply going to read Persuasion with my book club. It would accomplish two goals at once by also crossing it off my Classics Club list.

But somehow I ended up requesting a huge stack of Jane Austen reference materials from the library along with an annotated Persuasion, and I was off. Reading Jane. Watching Jane movies. Browsing through Jane reference books. Writing about Jane.

Before I knew it, I was hooked. I joined our library branch manager in oozing the wonderfulness of Jane to the book club. I read Persuasion and moved to Northanger Abbey and then Emma and, before I even finished Emma, I'm reading Mansfield Park.

Emma is an absolute delight of a character. Interfering, but with the best of intentions. A bit full of herself, but also easily humbled by a friend's sharp words. Certain that she had no desire to marry, but then abruptly and completely certain of her love for an unexpected person.

I've loved all these Jane Austen characters so much that I feel like I've been these places in England and befriended them at various parties and dinners and walks and balls.

I'm loving Austen in August.

What a lovely story!

It features the amusing and vivid characters that are a trademark of Jane Austen's writing, the cosy atmosphere or times long gone and manners long forgotten, and most of all, the wit and clever plots which fill the reader with anticipation for the most minute events.

What amazed me the most is how Jane Austen managed to create such a multilayered and realistic protagonist in Emma. Such that is not your typical “good lady”, but a human being, sometimes affected by shameful human emotions, I am sure most of us can relate to.

I can't recommend this book enough!