In the Booktube world July is #janeaustenjuly2021. Every July we celebrate the works of Jane Austen by reading her works, watching TV adaptations and suchlike. Last July, I read “Emma“, I’ve now read half of her main novels (I read Pride and Prejudice several years ago). I am not the biggest fan of Jane Austen, she is a fine writer and I appreciate the humour of her work, but the romance genre really isn’t my jam. It also seems having read three of her novels now that the heroine will always end up with a happy ending. I bought Northanger Abbey way back in January in preparation for #janeaustenjuly2021 and duly began on 1st July to read it, At 250 pages, Northanger Abbey is no mammoth, not like Anna Karenina which I was reading over a period of 4 months.
Is Jane Austen over-hyped? I’m not qualified to answer that. Of the 19th century women authors I prefer Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley and recently I enjoyed reading Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.
As July neared its end I had still only managed to read the first of the two volumes of Northanger Abbey, our heroine Catherine Morland hadn’t even got to Northanger Abbey, she was having too much fun in Bath with that viper in the bosom in the shape of Isabella Thorpe. I had been reading other books in July with strong and gripping plots like Her Winter of Darkness and The Cartographer’s Secret. These are both newly published books, Northanger Abbey‘s plot didn’t grip me in the same way, I didn’t feel the same page turning compulsion. I was also distracted by the vehicles in the plot, what is a curricle, a chaise and four or a gig? Henry Tilney drove a curricle with more prowess than John Thorpe.
Finally, I found a method to get the book finished, I found the audiobook of Northanger Abbey on YouTube and listened to that as I followed the text. Not the ideal reading experience but it got the job done. I did consider DNFing (DNF=didn’t finish, to DNF a book is to put it aside) the book, but I felt I was too far in for that option.
Northanger Abbey won’t meet the same fate as The Mystery of Udolpho in the 2007 film adaptation of Northanger Abbey.
My rating 3.5 out of 5
Blog #2 