Nov. 1st, 2018

sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
RIGHT so October is a write-off, I didn't read a single book all month because life was too much and I couldn't handle having feelings about good books, but I still have out-of-date book thoughts to post! This is a book I read two months ago!

This is one of Austen's works of juvenilia, and it is.....PRETTY RIDICULOUS. It's clearly intended as a satire of a certain variety of popular novels of the time, though I think I'm missing some of Austen's jokes via not being quite familiar enough with the sort of literature she's satirizing.

It's overall a pretty teenaged-feeling attempt at satire, with literally nothing going on EXCEPT for the things she's poking fun at; it very much reminds me of the Mary Sue parodyfics I used to read when I was a teenager. I'm charmed by this piece of evidence that people just keep on being people.

There are some genuinely funny bits, but overall it's a quick and shallow read that is mostly only interesting to take a look at in order to see how much Austen grew as a writer over the years. People sometimes like to think sometimes that great writers are born, not made, but it clearly took Austen some practice to get as good as she did!

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