Project Austen - January - Sense and Sensibility

Title: Sense and Sensibility

Author: Jane Austen

Genre: Classic, Romance

General Thoughts: Lovely-dovey!

Rating: 5/5 stars.

First Lines

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two sisters that find love in different ways. Marianne, eccentric and extroverted. Elinor, quiet and reserved. We see how each's personalities influences the love they expect, and how each suffer's through.

Jane Austen continues to be my favorites author. End of discussion.

This book blew me. It centered around the two north and south poles that were Marianne and Elinor and how each duels on the events that are happening. I'm a person who loves character development, and this was definitely the book for me.

We first have Elinor, whom I can relate the most to. I'm the type of person who's quiet and not keen on putting my feelings out there. I tend to think before I act a lot and tend to lean towards somebody else's happiness instead of mine. And that's exactly what Elinor is. She never did anything in the book that wasn't based on not hurting her mom and sister's feelings. Even if she was incredibly saddened or happy she wouldn't say anything about if she though it could inconvenience somebody else. And every time Marianne did the exact opposite, she would cringe and mentally criticize her. And to have someone that I can relate to so accurately was pretty amazing. There were some things she did that I don't agree with, but most of her behavior was me in a nutshell.

Then we have beautiful Marianne. She's loud and impertinent and she never keeps her thoughts to herself. If she's suffering, the rest of the world suffers with her. You see, as much as she's the complete opposite of me, I found myself agreeing with her so much. And I could relate to her as well. There were things she did that I just had to nod and smile.

Then we have the rest of the characters like their imbecile brother or her ogre of a wife. And the sweet lady who took them under her wing, or she thought she did (can't remember her name, oops). All those characters added the perfect bittersweet feelings when needed.

The overall idea of the story is pretty amazing. Of course, it being a classic and such an old one, the language was kind of difficult for me to keep up at times, specially because English is not my mother language. But once you get hook in it, you read way faster.

I do have to point that around the second part of the book (it's divided in three) it got a little tedious and I found some parts to be unnecessary. But once you get back on the third part it's amazing all over again.

Of course, super in love with Edward (not the sparkly one). Even though he can be quite the idiot for being so slow and such a gentleman, I still forgive him.

Overall, great, amazing, incredible classic by the wonderful Jane Austen who never disappoints me. I really love her stories and the way she writes. Sometimes, I think it's out of this world.

I would recommend this books as much as Pride and Prejudice. You can't just read one Jane Austen and move on. Jane Austen delivers amazingness all over the place.

I can't say that this is over Pride and Prejudice on my favorites, but it's pretty close to it. And I will reread it someday. Not right away, but in the near future.

Sense and Sesibility (1995)

I've already watched this movie before but found myself remembering little about it. Nonetheless, this was super sweet and funny to watch again. I remember now why I started liking this movies so much. It's so fun and sweet and kind of innocent but old-ish. I think that this is my favorite adaptation and that the actors were amazing in it.

Sense and Sensibility (2008)

This was a first for me, never before I've watched this version. It's a three-episodes series and at first I thought it was going to be incredibly boring because no way in hell this was going to be made longer and not boring, but it actually was interesting in most parts. They did they're own interpretation of a few unsaid events or feelings which I thought was an amazing touch of them to do. I loved this version and I'd re-watch it again a few more times, with my mom even. And I'm happy to have found out about it.

This was my Sense and Sensibility overall review. I'm in love with this story in all the representations of it and I think it is in the top five. I recommend you watching and reading all of the mentioned above and I hope you find it as pleasant as I did.

You miss me?

You're probably wondering where in the whole world have I've been? Why did I just disappear for three months or so? And why am I back?

I've been wondering the same things myself. Really, it's been hard.

Starting by saying, I'm terribly sorry. It never was my intention to disappear as totally as I did. I thought I could manage two post per month, but not even that happened. My plans went straight to hell.

You see, throughout the months of September, October, November and December, my days were filled with craziness all over. I had what we call Gaitas in my country, which is kind of like Christmas carols but not so Christmas and more rhythm and flexibility. Thing is, I was in my school group for the competitions, that ran out through November and December. This whole thing needed practice, and that's what I've been doing for the past ten months.

Once the competitions started, my life became a total mess with all the stuff I was doing at the same time. I nearly broke in half a few times but I managed to get out alive. You see, we had competitions every weekend and sometimes on weekdays. And it wasn't just one, it was several competitions. And they were festivals, so of course I stayed and enjoyed. That meant, less time for me to do stuff. All this made me almost go crazy and I wanted to quit a few times, but it was definitely the best times of my life.

Being busy like crazy and not having time to do all the things I had to do, blogging went down in the priorities list, almost out of it. Reason why I never posted a thing in this whole months.

Was I completely out of free time? No, I did have some free time, but I took those mostly for sleeping, thing that I lacked a lot during those days, or to reading. You see, I'm a big reader, but I'm responsible too. Of course, this whole thing affected my reading completely. I read a total of four books during those months. And that's incredibly low considering I used to read at least four books per month.

Now, back to January, I'm free of Gaitas duties. I'm still trying to settle back to my normal life. But now I do have time for reading and for writing for this blog.

Hence this post.

I'm now starting "fresh", in a way. I've redesigned my blog and found a few things that I wanted to change. And most importantly, I'm forgetting about all the things I did or didn't do last year and just focusing on making them this year. I didn't exactly intend this to be like a New Year's resolution, but January is the time where I finally am free, so New Year's resolution it is.

I'm going back to my reviews and monthly bookmarks. Also, I'm retaking my Austen Project. I'm going to be reading and watching Sense and Sensibility for the month of January, as it was the first book that I intended to read. I did read it in the month that corresponded back then but I never got to review it or the movies, so it'll be as if I started it in January.

Also, I'll be reading pre-realese books (provided by NetGalley) and doing some publicity on them. Because I just feel like it.

And maybe I'll add a few things along the way.

The important things is that I'm back and not planning to disappear anywhere on the near future. I'm here to stay.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart if you forgive me for my absence and for reading this until the end. I hope you stick with me and join me through my year in books.

PD: Starting January 31st, I'll be starting with my Project Austen post and then on Frebruary 1st the Monthly Bookmarks and reviews ;)