I finished Pride and Prejudice today. I can't believe it took me this long to finish reading the book. I lost a lot of time when I accidentally left it outside overnight and it got completely soaked in the rain. I spent a week drying it with a fan/hairdryer/sunlight, hoping and praying that the pages wouldn't keep that wrinkled, damp-book look to them. It is a library book, after all. Happy to say that my patience while drying out the book paid off and you can hardly tell it was almost ruined. Once I reattach the cover, that is. Funny thing about books - they expand when they've been completely soaked and then dried. So now the cover is slightly smaller than the book itself. Hopefully, this will escape the eye of the librarian when I return it.
The story itself was very good and I now understand why this book is considered a classic. I think you should read it. Or watch a movie version of it (I recommend the Kiera Knightley version, or the Colin Firth version). In a nutshell, girl meets boy and boy is rude to girl, so girl decides she hates boy and that he's a stuck-up and proud jerk. Girl eventually rethinks her dislike and they profess love to each other, after a bunch of other things happen, and eventually boy and girl become engaged. Happy endings all around.
What's amazing to me is that Austen's books have spawned an almost cult following (there is even a term for its followers: Janeite). If you do a Google search for Pride and Prejudice, you get roughly 14 million results. Some jewels out there are along the lines of extremely detailed websites that go over every detail of the book and the life lessons it teaches us (taking it a bit too far, in my opinion), and quizzes that tell you which female character you are (I'm Elizabeth, apparently).
Basically, what I learned from this book is sometimes, if you're open-minded, you find a Mr. Darcy; but other times, if your vanity gets in the way, you may find yourself with a Mr. Wickham. Fortunately, there are sites like this one to point us in the right direction.
Jane Austen herself never had much luck in the romance department and it seems that she channeled all these secret hopes and desires into her books. She was only 42 when she died, young by today's standards. Her books were published in the last years of her life, with two posthumously. She started Pride and Prejudice (initially titled First Impressions) when she was 21, following a ill-fated romance with the nephew of neighbors, Thomas Lefroy (who was most likely the basis of her character Mr. Darcy). He eventually became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland but at the time of his romance with Jane, was dependent on family for financing his legal education and career. It was decided that Jane was not properly suited to him and they were kept away from each other, marriage being strongly discouraged. If you've read Pride and Prejudice, this all sounds very familiar.
