Northanger Abbey

by Jane Austen

I finished this back in April, but as usual have fallen very behind with my blogging. As blogging takes up too much time in writing when I could be reading, I am only going to record the classics here for the time being.

I read Northanger Abbey for several challenges – the 8th in my 5 year long Classics Club Challenge (read 50 classics in 5 years), my Goodreads 2020 Around the Year Challenge (#14 – a book by an author on the Abe List of 100 Essential Female Writers), Goodreads Classics Challenge (#3 – takes place in a country other than where you live), and Goodreads Reading Women Challenge (#11 – read & watch a book to movie adaptation). I read most of Jane Austen’s books as a teenager, and never enjoyed her as much as George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, or the Brontes – Austen’s books always struck me as rather insipid. However, when I came across a second-hand copy of Northanger Abbey, which I don’t think I had read before, I leapt in, and really enjoyed it! It is a short, amusing, and satisfying story, with some laugh out loud moments. Soon after finishing the book I watched the movie, and enjoyed that as well. The characters are all rather stereotypical, but that’s not really a problem, and the settings are well-described and interesting, especially the episodes in Bath, which I visited years ago. Entertaining, and heartily recommended!