I never thought that Northanger Abbey would be my downfall.

I started my Jane Austen project two years ago, to the day! I thought it was a reasonable goal to read all her novels in one year. After all, there are only six. I almost lost it at Mansfield Park, but after powering through that I figured the worst was over. It wasn’t.

Here’s why I cannot finish Northanger Abbey. No matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to be interested in its heroine, Catherine Morland. I think it also doesn’t help that I had only the vaguest idea what the book is about. With the other novels, I had a general concept of the plot so I knew how the story would flow. But with Northanger I didn’t know when and if things would get interesting, or what the novel was building up to. The one thing I knew about it is what I got from the movie The Jane Austen Book Club: that it’s a novel about a novel.

This book that I could not finish even after three attempts hung over my head for a long time. I even felt guilty every time I picked up another book, as if I was abandoning Jane Austen! As a result I had a major reading slump for the better part of this year.

I haven’t given up on Northanger though! I am nothing if not competitive, and I simply cannot leave a project unfinished because it means I lost. I’ll get back to it soon! The deadline is long past, but I will still finish this. And I’m happy to report that the slump is over! I’m now at the other extreme, with a TBR pile that is taking over my room. Ahh, the problems of a bookworm.

 

 

(Featured photo courtesy of http://www.bathchronicle.co.uk)