Reading Log

This week I started down the path of my journey to accomplish what is, in my opinion, my hardest and most important reading goal, to finish all of the Jane Austen novels.  After starting it over a month ago, I finally finished the last 100 pages of Northanger Abbey.  It was one of Austen’s shorter and earlier novels, but nonetheless, I enjoyed it.  It was difficult to make the switch back to Austen novels after reading an easier, leisurely book like The Hunger Games.  However, the difference in culture, elevated diction, and at times hard to decipher humor presented a challenge that revived my passion for classic literature and reverence for Austen.  Although most of her story lines are the same and many of my colleagues that have read her work complain that her novels are either full of just women talking or story lines built up only to be resolved nonchalantly in the last two pages of the novel, there is a simple, rustic elegance about the masterful way she weaves a path through the complex maze of a woman’s mind and articulates it flawlessly while still containing a subtle criticism on society, marriage, and the social standing of women.  Her style is so complicated yet so simple its intriguing.