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Comment by yeetaccount4 | Hacker News Reader

I didn’t understand what ‘classic’ meant until I read Jane Austen, her stuff still feels fresh today. If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, I highly recommend it - there’s a lot of perspective to be gained about people there that’s relevant today.

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I only start reading Jane Austen two years ago, right after my divorce. A line from Pride and Prejudice hit me real hard and made me understand why my marriage failed. It is at the end of the novel, said by Mr Bennet to Lizzy: "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life."

P+P is rollicking fun and all the P+P movies are rollicking fun. I do however, prefer Persuasion. And I'll admit that I didn't spot that Clueless (which was awesome) was based on Emma until I heard something on NPR. I just remember thinking at the time, damn this script is tight for a teen movie.

If you like P+P then A Room With A View, EM Forster, is a scream from start to finish. (Well, not) every chapter is titled X Lies To Y.

+1 for Room with a View. Actually all of EM Forster is great.

Unfortunately all of these novels were ruined for me by high school English class.

If you need to forget a bad HS English class, and most of us do, you might watch some of the excellent movies made from the Austen novels. Pride and Prejudice has been made at least 17 times including an excellent Bollywood version and a less excellent zombie movie. Emma has Clueless. These movies are seriously a lot of fun. Then if you really like the movie, you can go back to the books with the movie in mind rather than high school.

I thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was absolutely excellent. It sounds like maybe you haven't seen it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1374989/

And Henry James!

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