It turns out, according to an Oxford academic, that Jane Austen was actually a very poor writer and her prose was ungrammatical, badly punctuated and had bad spelling.
She also claims that the prose in the published novels, which I find boring but some find polished, was actually written by her male editor based on what she had written. Given that, thanks to my effete English teacher, I had to suffer studying Mansfield Park for my English Literature O level, when I could have been studying an H.G.Wells novel, the more Jane Austen can be dissed, the better 🙂
Some are claiming that she may have been dyslexic, which might excuse the bad spelling and so on, but her books are an utter bore to me.
Did anyone doing their O level (or you youngsters your GCSE) get to read a book for English that you actually enjoyed?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Jeez, FEEG, I don’t think I can remember that far back – Joyce and Ulyssess come to mind, but I wouldn’t swear to it, nor say that I enjoyed it 🙂
I did quite enjoy ‘La Peste,’ for French A level, though.
I enjoyed Prester John, Twelfth Night, and a.n. other.
I remember now The Mill on the Floss.
FEEG I’ve just been reading this mint piece of H G Wells. Enjoy!
http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/2868/
Re O level texts, yes, I was turned on to Ian McEwan when no 2 son was doing “The Child in Time” for GCSE. Tremendous book. Really touched a nerve. Read loads of his books since.
Yes, Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble.
About a young Foreign Office wallah in the south Pacific, amusing, factual and well written.
You must be deficient in some way to find Austen boring, try reading it again as an adult from the social commentary angle.
Have you ever read her epistolary novella, Lady Susan?
Never read anything by Charles Dickens when you are fourteen.
OZ
Agree totally, Oz. Dickens is a real storyteller. Sadly, I carved out the centre of my hardback copy of The Mystery of Edwin Drood to make a secure place to hide stuff away from my brother!
I found that dissecting any book to the degree required by English Lit classes killed it stone dead for me – surprised it didn’t turn me off reading for ever. My reading choices generally tend to be pretty unsophisticated though: deep down I’m very shallow.
Jan – The best use for a Dickens, IMHO, except apart from, perhaps, a first edition. 🙂 Dickens leaves me cold, as do Hendrix, Warhol, Tracey ‘effin’ Enim and all the other accepted ‘stars’ of the ‘Yartz’ establishment.
OZ
Darrel – I don’t believe your latter comment for one minute. :-
OZ
Sorry, Darrel – I meant 🙂 at the end.
Hurray! At long last someone who feels like I do! As, I continually pointed out to my English teacher: the books were meant to be read and the plays to be seen. They were not written to be pulled into tiny little pieces so that we could have a test on how well we had read our assignment that week. If a book caught my attention – I read it from cover to cover and then, of course, I couldn’t answer the silly questions when we had a test six weeks later. When I say silly questions – the daftest was “How Mrs So-an-so ate her peas”…
I refused to ‘do’ Eng. Lit. for O-level. I was, however, required to attend the classes. I point-blank refused to participate (on the grounds that I wasn’t taking Greek and wasn’t required to go to the Greek classes) and took homework in from the subjects I was taking. After a couple of weeks, I was quietly told to ‘disappear’.
I think it’s a shame that Eng. Literature was presented in that way.
Oh dear, I’m a great admirer of Jane Austen, and I did A’Level English Literature and thoroughly enjoyed the course. I do re-read Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare from time to time, and some of the poetry I studied too.
I’m obviously a bit odd!
Horses for courses, eh? If you’re not of an analytical bent, written language studies are a bore. But why not just READ the books and decide if you like them? Even 14 year olds can do that.
And that, Janus, is precisely what I did… 🙂