About to give up

I just searched through past posts on reading to find the one where I talk about 2 useless rules I used to have that stopped me from reading very much. It is rather ironic then that the reason I was searching for it, was because I am about to put down a book by one of my favourite authors. And the post was written after watching a movie about that author.

'Emma' by Jane Austin is starting to grate me. I am reading it on my e-reader as I go to and from work, but I find myself preferring to just sit and stare at people in the tube who are trying to avoid eye contact with everyone else, or reading newspapers about Michael Jackson's last moments.

'Pride and Prejudice' is one of my favourite books. Then again, that doesn't mean much since I loved 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'David Copperfield' by Dickens, but 'Hard Times' as the name suggests made me feel like I was prying my eyes out with a plastic spoon.

Anyway... Emma started off well enough and watching her flit around with her bizarre views on life, position, and how 'one should act' was amusing enough. But it doesn't stop! She just carries on and on doing and saying the most bizarre things. Not being an aggressive guy, I find myself wanting to slap her to bring her to her senses. I am not sure I can take another chapter.

I think it is time to put the book down and move on. The two useless rules to which I referred were:

1) I would always finish a book
2) I would only read one book at a time

Fortunately, while I have not yet broken rule 1 in this case, I wasn't following rule 2. So I have carried on reading in the meantime.

All I can say, is reading the first half of Emma makes me very grateful to the Emily Pankhursts of this world who helped put a stop to the nonsense of the Emmas of this world.