Emma

In contrast, I just finished Jane Austen's Emma. What gorgeous language! You just want to speak it outloud. To illustrate the brilliance of her writing I found a passage about the most boring subject I could: the weather.

The evening of this day was very long, and melonchony, at Hartfield. The weather added what it could of gloom. A cold stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was disspoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights the longer visible...

The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melonchony, seemed to reign at Hartfield; but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again.With all the eagerness wuch a transition gives, Emma resolves to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they might gradually introduce. p. 382, 384

Beautiful, no? I really liked Emma. I'd seen the Gwyneth Paltrow movie several times before I'd read it. Which, really, kind of ruined my own imagination in reading. But it's such a well done movie--Mrs. Elton is so perfectly obnoxious, Mr. Knightley so likeable, Emma so redeemable--I hold no grudges.

However, the movie just doesn't do the end of the book justice. Austen ties it together so beautifully. It isn't a Cinderella ending. You know the details, you see how it works out. I like that. Bravo Austen, bravo!