This is the novel that allowed me to spread the wings of my feminine side and embrace a little chick-litting without having to feel any less of a man (not that this novel is chick-lit, or that I'm saying there's anything wrong with chick-lit...but I think you get the point). Before Jane Austen, I never would have thought it possible to craft a love story so exquisitely and nobly, avoiding all of the maudlin that is so often paired with romance books. But that isn't to say Jane Austen isn't sentimental (what would romance be without it?), but that she embraces her sentimentality with such a matronly deportment that it causes one to reassess all the negative connotations one may possess about women's literature, or at least it did for me. ( )

Not my favorite Austen, but enjoyable. The characters weren't as developed as her later books, such as "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice". ( )

Much better than the movie. I did see the movie but wow this book blew me away. There is so much more detail in the book I would recommend to anyone. Especially young girls ( )

I'm won over a bit more towards Austenland after this one, following on from Pride and Prejudice. While naturally still entirely concerned with the lives of the idle, parasitic landed gentry class (though only fair to mention that a servant did get to speak a couple of lines here; one small step and all), there appeared a handful of Dickensian moments, which locate a similarity across the apparently vast gulf between the social conditions of the typical Dickens character and the typical Austen character, lying in a caustic description of human nature's faults in a passage taking the form of ironic approbation. For instance:

The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

That's the sort of writing that amuses me most agreeably, and which Dickens absolutely excelled at. Most pleasing to find more of that in Sense and Sensibility, and hopefully more in her later novels?

The opening scene in which John Dashwood talks himself down in steps, with the invaluable assistance of his wife, in terms of what monetary gesture he should make to his half-sisters following the death of their father which left him most wealthy and them comparatively middle class (a reduction in status to the employ of only 4 servants, I believe), is pretty comic. The twist involving Lucy at back of the novel is quite good, I admit, I didn't see that coming, a nice change from the entirely predictable unfolding of Pride and Prejudice, although they end up in the same place: marriages and happily ever after. Ah well, this one only barely got over the line. The novel does drag somewhat in the middle for me, could have been a bit more swift in its arrival, but then anyone who enjoys Dickens has to grant the license in an otherwise highly creditable work. ( )

4.5/5 Two sisters who are complete opposites in character spend most of their time trying to understand one another as they struggle with their world and finding happiness and husbands. Both undergo changes and learn to meet each other halfway as they grow closer together. Austen's wit and savage commentary about the social norms of the day are evident here as in her other books. I adored Elinor and Marianne. Next, the movie! ( )