Am I vaguely ashamed that as a self-proclaimed book worm, and lover of Regency/Napoleon era fiction, it has taken me until my mid-30s to ever read any Austen at all? Yes, vaguely.  But I'm glad I finally did it! 

The writing is dense, but not displeasing to read, and while I knew in broad strokes some of what happened from cultural osmosis (namely Mr Darcy's initial terrible proposal), I have managed to steer clear of enough spoilers these last 30 years that I was still surprised by a lot of what happened (I did t even know that Bingley was courting Elizabeth's sister and not Elizabeth herself!). 

Anyway, this was a lot of fun, and while I may not be picking up more Austen immediately, I'm excited to read her other books (and to *finally* be able to read all the billions of published Pride and Prejudice fanfiction, like Miss Bennett's Dragon, which I've had in my audio library for like, a year now) 

I read LitJoy Press' special edition of this book, and the illustrations were really quite beautiful and really enhanced the experience.