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Sunday, April 28, 2013

5-Star Ratings

I have decided that if a book is worthy of a 5-star rating, then it is worthy of a review. So, I am going to go to all my 5-star ratings at Amazon and Goodreads and systematically write reviews for them. If I cannot remember the books, I will re-read them and if necessary re-rate them.

This decision was sparked by my recent re-read of, an all time favourite, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I rather nervously reviewed below:

Pride and PrejudicePride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I admit it! I am smitten by Darcy and have been since I was 13 years old. I return to him and Lizzy at least once a year, usually at a low point in my life when I am in dire need of simple pleasures. A re-read of Pride and Prejudice is guaranteed to revive my spirits and firmly knock me out of any thoughts of wallowing in self-pity or doom and gloom.

You cannot read Jane Austen's novels without being struck by just how skilful she was at deploying the English language. That is why I can continuously go back to her books with no risk of boredom. I find myself completely caught up in the sheer brilliance of her work.

But, as I openly admitted before, I really go back time and again to get my annual Darcy fix. Why do I love Darcy?:

1. He’s obscenely rich
2. He’s good looking
3. He’s intelligent
4. He is brooding and arrogant – the original “bad boy” of literature
5. He is smitten by Lizzy who is clever, vibrant and atypical of what men desired in her era
6. He loves his sister
7. He realizes the error of his ways and consciously embarks on a self-improvement project for Lizzy - Let’s face it, all women believe that they are capable of changing their man for the better (well, in our opinion anyway)
8. He is not afraid to take drastic action against injustice

These characteristics are fairly standard for the male heroes in romance novels, but there are few of these heroes are able to compare favourably with Darcy. So I will probably continue to be smitten by him for the foreseeable future, and that's fine, because it really is no hardship to read Austen's masterpiece every year.

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