Today is World Book Day, so I couldn’t just read any ol’ thing. What better way to celebrate than with the book that inspired Jane Austen?
Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books, so I had pretty big hopes for Fanny Burney. And I can definitely see the markers where Austen took her inspiration from. But Cecilia is WORK. This isn’t near the sweet, sassy love story that P&P is.
For one, the literacy level is higher. P&P is not necessarily an easy book to read, but Cecilia required me to use the dictionary feature on my Kindle repeatedly. And I have a pretty big vocabulary! Also, the storyline revolves quite a bit around money. I was pretty much over that by 25% of the way through, and was ready for the actual story to begin! I get it, Harrell gambles. Come ON!
Unfortunately, the book never really got past the money. Cecilia IS an heiress after all. Her whole life revolved around her fortune and how to obtain it out of trust. There were a ton of people, mostly men, trying to take advantage of her for that purpose, and they all started to run together pretty quickly.
It turns out…I only had Volume 1 of this book. I went on Wikipedia, because the book ended abruptly with no resolution, and there does seem to be quite a nice, complicated love story in the second half. But…I never got to that part, and I probably won’t download it. I’ll just stick to Austen.
What are you reading for World Book Day?
As I Lay Reading 
I love that book!
Really? Any secret to it? I kept zoning out during the “Someone loan me all your money!” “Oh no, we are broke again.”