Pride and Prejudice

I think I may have mentioned several days ago in this blog that, almost on a whim, I picked up a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I completed this evening.  I don't know why this book, which The New Yorker called "the most beloved novel in the language," somehow escaped my notice all these years.  I read Emma; I think I read some of her other works; but alas I never read Pride and Prejudice.  Now happily this fault in my education has been corrected, and I share the opinion of many Austen fans that Elizabeth Bennet is one of the finest characters ever created.

Now that I have read Price and Prejudice, I can complete my reading of every single word that the British mystery writer P. D. James has written, with her 2011 book, Death Comes to Pemberley, which proposes a murder following the events in Austen's book.  I never read it because I never read Pride and Prejudice.  Now I can!  I know I am behind the times a bit; I think Masterpiece Theater serialized the book a few years ago.

Here on Sabbatical, so far from home, we feel that we have time to do nothing more some evenings than curl up with a good book, the sound  of the ocean in the background, wave after wave coming in unhurriedly, page after page being turned.  Reading and The Beach go hand in hand - like Elizabeth and Darcy, strolling through the grounds of Pemberley.