Emma by Jane Austen

I gave it four stars because it was a shrink wrapped box set, but each book had a price sticker on it. This wouldn't be a problem except that when removing the stickers, they took off the pink coloring on the book cover. I got these because the covers are beautiful, so it made me mad that a few of them are ruined now.

Beautiful set with everything she wrote. I'm enjoying the volumes very much. I wish those stupid stickers hadn't been on the backs of the books, though, because when you take them off they ruin some of the cover design and leave a mark where they were taken from.

Please understand that I am not reviewing Miss Austen's works but rather this particular presentation of her books.

The set is lovely to look at and will look nice on a shelf or desk just because they are pretty. The binding is good and I really like it that each book has a ribbon marker so I won't be always misplacing my bookmarker!

As many have stated, it is a very big shame that the stickers are on the back of each book. I am assuming that maybe because mine came in the winter months the sticker came off fairly easily, leaving no sticky residue. But it is obvious on every book that there was a sticker. Some show a dark mark the size and shape of the sticker. But most of them took off some of the ink on the beautiful covers when the sticker came off. So you have a mark and some of the ink is missing on many of them. This needs to be rectified. ( I have posted photos of the backs of some of the books.)

The only other complaint I have at this point is that the case is just a tad too tight. Just a couple of centimeters added to the width and height would make it so much easier to remove a book from the case. As it is now, I have to turn the box over and dump the books out enough so that I can grasp the spine of the one I want to pull it out. I can only see this being more of a problem in the future as books tend to expand when read.

I am interested in some of the other sets they offer, but right now would hesitate to spend that much money considering the flaws I mentioned.

This book seems to be someone's summarized version of Jane Austen's work. Each chapter appears to be shorter and has lost a lot of the descriptive language and detail from the original book. The cover is very pixilated, the text is probably a 12 or 14 point font that looks like something I can print from home. It also claims to have been printied in CA the same day I ordered it.

Now I know why it was so inexpensive, yet still a complete waste of my money since I actually wanted to read the entire work of Jane Austen.

This is another of the books in the Austen Project, modern authors retelling the Austen classics. This one even has the same name as the original.

Val McDermid is a successful author of crime thrillers, none of which I have read. She accepted the challenge of updating Northanger Abbey and chose to make the heroine, Catherine Morland, into a Twilight-loving, vampire-obsessed teenager. Since I'm not a big fan of Twilight or vampires in general - although I quite like Dracula - that artistic choice made it very hard for me to like Cat, as she is called in the book. She seemed utterly shallow and without substance, and since the book is all about her, that left the plot feeling quite flimsy and frivolous for me.

So, we have Cat Morland, sheltered, homeschooled daughter of a vicar and his wife from the little village of Piddle Valley in Dorset. It is a happy, loving family with four children, a brother older than Cat and two sisters who are younger. The family has quite straitened financial circumstances and there's not much chance for travel, so it is very exciting for Cat when their childless neighbors, the Allens, invite her to travel with them to Edinburgh for the summer Fringe Festival.

When they arrive in Edinburgh, Cat's world explodes with possibilities. She essentially takes the city by storm. She meets Bella Thorne who, almost instantly, becomes her BFF. Then she finds that Bella has her cap set for Cat's brother, James, who is a school friend of her brother, and she is equally determined that Cat will be paired with that odious brother, Johnny.

Soon, Cat also meets handsome Henry Tilney at a dance and loses her heart to him, and she also meets his sister Eleanor, who invites her to come and visit them at their family home, Northanger Abbey. Cat looks at online pictures of Northanger Abbey and is entranced by the idea of it because it looks like a place where vampires might dwell. Arriving at the Abbey, she imagines that the Tilneys are a family of vampires, but the thought doesn't scare her; it only excites her.

McDermid actually follows the original plot pretty closely, just changing carriages to cars and letters on paper to emails and texts and girls obsessed with The Mysteries of Udolpho to girls obsessed with Twilight and Herbridean Harpies. She makes a stab at updating the language of the teenagers, but that fell flat for me. Words like "totes" or "amazeballs" - I mean, are those even words? And do teenagers really talk like that? I don't have much opportunity to interact with teenagers these days, so perhaps I'm not the best judge...

I really don't have the heart to summarize the entire plot here. There was no one in the story that I felt a connection with, and so even though the book was fairly short, reading it felt like a bit of a slog. I found myself missing the witty dialogue and beautiful language of the original.

In fact, I think this book would probably be enjoyed more by someone who has never read the original and so has nothing with which to compare it. I can imagine that it might appeal to the readers of Twilight, for example, and if it could make those readers sufficiently curious about the writings of Austen to pick up the original and read it, that would be the best possible outcome.

If you want to preserve classics and like to read with a cup of a tea and a cozy chair, these are for you. Simple cloth binding is enhanced with vintage-style decoration. Thick paper and good, easy to read print. These books are comfortable to read, look great on the shelf.

Emma is one of Austen's and my least favorite characters. Most matchmakers are bossy types and are universally in the MYOB (mind your own business) crowd. Sometimes she is definitely mean-spirited. She could have more positively spent her time perfecting her musicianship or working on her artistic talent. The illustrations were a reminder of the dress of the time and the households as well.

It was fun to compare the movies available as well. The British BBC production definitely had the better casting. How would you feel about marrying someone 16 years your senior? The women of Austen's time had some issues we would not cope with as well.The book is definitely an eye-opener on Austen as an early Women's Lib advocate. We don't realize how good we have it. We can do anything we want these days.