5: Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

Stanford Bookstore run, to buy Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (Hopcroft, Motwani, Ullman) for my upcoming CS class. Ordered Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation while I was at it, since it's a far better book.

-  Bought Northanger Abbey. Damnit.

+  Actually read Northanger Abbey this weekend.

-  Very much would like to read more Austen, and Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, which has been on my wishlist for a while, is likely to be purchased soon, too.

What about the book, then? Apart from the two moments where I wanted to kill John Thorpe, it is quite a pleasant read. More self-consciously funny than Pride & Prejudice with more direct address to the reader. Jane breaks the fourth wall and both defends and pokes fun at the novel as a literary form. Well, whatever—you can read all that somewhere else. It's just a fun read.

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability to administer to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author;—and to her treatment of the subject I will only add in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.

(Volume 1, Chapter 14)

Read: 5
Acquired: 7