this is my 2nd time trying to read Austen, and the first time I was successful (thanks to the bookclub lending out the books for the whole summer - so what excuse could I have?) but boy was it hard.
as an author, she is verbose - her sentences run twice to three times the usual length. her books are almost 200 years old and their limitations show. it's like a Victorian soap opera - all melodrama and overwrought dialogue with no bodice ripping in sight.