OK, I was being a bit flippant with 'all the same'. Also, also, I was about 19 when I last read Austen. Should maybe try again, it being over ten years later.

I think that to appreciate Hardy, it helps to know the area he's writing about. It's all about Dorset and Hampshire (bleak, depressing places, but with a certain charm that grows on you. Like mould). Well, that, and about society and the Industrial Revolution. But mostly the heaths and the locals.

very different similarities between the older, more emotionally painful ones she wrote much closer to her death (Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion)

In fairness, it's the stylistic similarities in Austen that grated. But I'll try her again. Recommend me one?

Well, if you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you get pride, prejudice, and zombies, all for the price of one. Normally they sell pride and prejudice as a package deal, but in a special recession deal, they're throwing in zombies for free.

Thomas Hardy? :shudders:

(Sorry, I still remember having to dissect Return of the Native in high school. Not pleasant)

Just one? Persuasion. Old, sad, wise, meditative and thoughtful, with secret letters and dark pasts and regrets and quiet kindnesses and sidelong glances and selfish assholes who don't get nearly enough comeuppance and a great older couple and Jane Austen hating on Bath.

YMMV, but I'd avoid the illustrated version with drawings by Hugh Thomson -- he somehow makes Captain Wentworth, who ought to be handsome in a nice scruffy Wesley-without-the-giant-scary-insanity-issues way, look kind of domesticated and cute. Bleh.

eta: Okay, to be fair, I went and Googled it up, and the last picture of Wentworth looks all right. Still not my favorite set of Austen illustrations.

So am I hearing correctly that if one has never read Austen one might start with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and get a proper feel for the original material but with bonus zombies? I was under the impression that it was for folks who had already read the original.

Laga, I think 80% of it is the original text, so it will definitely give you a feel for the original.

Part of me thinks I loved Emma as much as I did *because* I read it in a class with a fabulous teacher, and the discussion was great.

Same with Tess -- I did a paper on it junior year of high school, and then made my teacher cry in class because she was losing an argument with me about it. (I wasn't trying to make her cry, though. That was actually a little unsettling, much as I disliked her.)

Honestly - the two writers I hated being subjected to in high school: Dickens and Annie Dillard.

Dear lord, I could not get through Great Expectations to save my life, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was the most Hippy Dippy piece of shit I've ever had to endure. Ptui!

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was the most Hippy Dippy piece of shit I've ever had to endure. Ptui!

FINALLY. THANK GOD. Definitive proof that you and Hec are clearly, firmly two distinct and separate persons!

I was never fond of things like hardy and wuthering heights -- overly dramatic. And while I did read Austen early, I agree that it improves as I age.