Introducing KEEPING UP WITH THE CLASSICS, discussing Pride & Prejudice + Giveaway!



Hey, hello! I'm so excited to introduce you all to a brand spanking new blog series! Welcome to Keeping Up With the Classics, a series created by myself and Lara @ Words With Lara where we'll be picking a classic each month, reading and then discussing it and spilling alllll our thoughts on both our blogs!

This series came about from the both of us wanting to read more classics but generally not finding the motivation for it. We thought a feature like this could be a great idea to make reading classics more fun and hopefully will be interesting to read about for our blog readers! Kudos to Lara for coming up with the name for this series as I would have never thought up such a good title!

Our January KUWTC pick is PRIDE & PREJUDICE by Jane Austen! We kept the discussion pretty short and sweet on both our blogs, partly because we might've actually read P&P a few months ago (not in January whoops...) but enjoy!


D I S C US S I O N :


Ella: So Lara, what made you want to read Pride and Prejudice in the first place? I actually felt a bit nervous before reading it because well, it’s Pride and Prejudice! One of the most famous romantic classics of all time you could say. And I ended up adoring it which I didn’t expect at all. Did you go into the book with any expectations?

Lara: I was suuuuuuper nervous going into this! I don’t know if it’s just me, but I always expect classics to be big dense books where you need to read sentences three times to figure out what they actually mean, but Pride and Prejudice was nothing like that. There was so much snark and sass, and it was genuinely an enjoyable read (is it bad that going into this I really wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to say that or not). I’m glad we started this series of us delving into the classics on a positive note because now it’s made me way more open to a genre that I previously thought consisted of mainly long and probably boring books.

Ella: Same! I think that’s why I’ve always stayed away from classics until now because I’ve always been intimidated by them. I was almost shocked by how much I loved P&P -- especially because I was determined to read it just because than I could say I’d read a Jane Austen book! (I know this is terrible haha.) One thing that really surprised me about P&P was how after you got past the old writing style, the story felt quite modern? I understand now why so many people call it a “timeless classic”.

Lara: Hahah! It’s bad, but I’m the same… I probably would have been happy if all I’d got out of reading Pride and Prejudice was being able to say that I’d read it (such a bad attitude to have), but I’m stoked that I got sooo much more out of it and you’re right, it does seem modern! If any anybody’s as afraid of classics as I was then P&P is the place to start.

Ella: Same, I think P&P is a great place to start if you’re wanting to get into classics! Moving on, I’m keen to hear your thoughts on Darcy! He was the only letdown in the book for me. Maybe I was expecting too much but he’s considered THE romantic hero of all heroes in literature and I just...didn’t get it? I thought he was boring and rude and although my opinion of him changed a bit by the end, I still wasn’t that impressed. Do you think the movie and/or tv series portrays Darcy accurately? Or even better?

Lara: Okay, I have to be honest, I’m a bit of a sucker for that whole brooding male trope so I kind of loved him.

Ella: I normally am as well so I was surprised I just wanted to yell at him to stop being a dick every time he appeared…

Lara: There were a few points where he really irritated me, but mainly I just wanted to push him and Elizabeth together and tell them to kiss goddamit, kiss! The movie in general really annoyed me so I don’t even know what I think of movie Darcy (I was too tied up in my general disappointment of the movie), but I LOVED Colin Firth in the TV series as Darcy and thought they did an excellent job of portraying him accurately. Honestly, I was quite surprised by how much I liked him (I’m normally not a big fan of Colin Firth because I’ve seen him play some seriously annoying characters), but him as Mr. Darcy? Yes please (oh gosh, someone stop me… I never thought I’d say that about Colin Firth). Have you started the TV series yet? You need to, it might even make you like Mr. Darcy a little bit more.

Ella: I’ve watched the first couple of episodes and enjoyed them way more then the 2005 movie haha. Colin Firth is HANDS DOWN THE MR DARCY, I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And I thought Jennifer Ehle was a great Elizabeth, to me she managed to capture the bite that Elizabeth has in the book much better than Kiera Knightly did in the movie!

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You can read our other part of the discussion on Lara's blog here!


GIVEAWAY!


To celebrate the launch of this feature and since we loved the book so much, we're giving away this gorgeous edition of PRIDE & PREJUDICE! See the rules below:




a Rafflecopter giveaway


have you read P&P?? or watched the tv and movie adaptions?? what's one classic you've always wanted to read but never got around to reading it?