Again today I read a piece praising the works of Jane Austen. Although I have one of her novels, Pride and Prejudice on my KindlePC, I have yet to read it. Oh, I've tried; I have started reading it several times. But I cannot get past the first few pages before a rather ungracious thought pops into my mind, and that thought is... This sucks.
Even the preposterous but highly acclaimed first line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" seems to me to be no more than a self-adopted fantasy belief, inspired by inborn vanity, of a not so perceptive, misguided woman. Not to say that a man could not have written this, and believed in its self-absorbed absurdity. But that, of course, is an entirely separate story.
As I read on, it becomes wearily apparent that this is similar to the modern-day cheap paperback romances that gleam and glitter from the bookshelves of the chain bargain stores, differing only in possessing the blessings of mountain-leveling time, and in inspiring blind worship of an era long-passed, sufficiently lauded by the hallowed opinions of the scholarly, the avowed preachments of the clan of socially elevated sensitive souls.
I will, of course, continue trying to read the story. Mainly because I have found on occasion in the past that my first impressions, my first opinions as to my potential enjoyment of a novel of which I have merely sampled a small portion, are often proven, upon deeper delving, to be wrong.
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While viewing a Youtube video regarding RSS feeds, I noticed that the young dorky nerds explaining RSS several times referred to the word 'distribute' but instead of pronouncing the word 'dis-TRIB-yute' as I had learned it years ago, they pronounced it 'DIS-truh-byute.' It makes no difference to me how it is correctly pronounced; I must admit that the first way, the way I'd originally learned it, sounds correct to me. The second way, the modern youthful way, sounds artificial, stupid, and just plain wrong... to me.
Elmer Fudd knows what I mean.
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Did you know that The Social Security Administration has a list of services they offer that can be activated online?
Well, it does.
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"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."
--George Santayana
Gene, I agree with your first impression of P & P. Don't know about you, my friend, but I no longer have time to spare for reading what doesn't either give me pleasure or zap me in the cerebellum.
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