The Jane Austen Collection - Sense and Sensibility [Audible Original]

Truth being told I'm not even sure WHEN I've listened to this audio book. It's been a while, maybe not a whole month but close to it. I'm not sure what I expected, I knew I probably seen some sort of movie version of this one and it's naturally one of the more famous ones but listening to it, I felt a little bored and / or annoyed by the two main female characters. They felt childish and not very truthful towards one another and mostly towards themselves. Maybe it's an age thing.

I'm not going to write a lot about the plot. Generally speaking two sisters - Marianne and Elinor Dashwood - together with their widowed mother (and younger sister) move out of their family home after the death of their father (and through that the loss of their fortune) and try to make it on their own as well as find a suitable husband. Well, maybe they aren't exactly looking for a husband but there is a lot of interest in finding a companion they feel comfortable and who appreciates them. 

Emma [Audible Production] by Jane Austen

This book was so much fun! I have never listened to anything like it! It's a REAL production. All the audio books I've listened to were narrated by one-two people who worked hard to bring to life all the characters with different voices and dialects. In this one we had a narrator (the one and only Emma Thompson) AND a full cast of characters, background sounds, music etc. I felt like I was truly inside a play. That's without even mentioning what I thought of the book itself! Which I DID enjoy. 

What was fun about this book, for me, was the ridiculous situations the characters found themselves in, the silly games they were playing all in the name of what's "proper" in society (and maybe what they could get away with...). But in a way, that's part of this book's charm. No one was REALLY likeable ESPECIALLY Emma Woodhouse, as Jane Austen herself said "I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like". If this was any other "regular" romance novel I would have REALLY pitied the hero for "settling" for someone like her, but honestly, though Mr. George Knightley is portrayed as practically perfect, that in itself felt like a flaw. 

I just recently realized the 90s movie "Clueless" is based on this novel and you know what, the title couldn't be more fitting as Emma is truly and absolutely CLUELESS of the world around her. She tries to match make the people around her in the worst way possible, missing the mark SO FAR it was simply embarrassing to everyone involved. The way she catalogues people around her (and their worth...) felt like a series of excuses I'm not sure how she herself bought (so no wonder she changed her mind about half of them). She behaved as righteous and good natured but in the end she was another snobby and boring rich girl, looking to brighten and color her days with the lives of others, mostly adding the color with her meddling.