Winter is the season for reading, and rereading the books you have occupied that still retain your body heat.
I am not the English academic who, when asked if he read novels, said, Yes, all six, every year. Once was enough for Northanger Abbey — an infant novel, swaddled in a dull satire of a dull genre (Gothick haunted houses). Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park have many excellencies, and we reread them often, yet are they not the B team? The first has a clumsy opening, the second an abrupt finish, and neither has a young mate for its heroine who is quite interesting enough. That leaves the three masterpieces. Pride and Prejudice is the fairy tale for young adults: How the lovers quarrel! How the rich one saves the day! Persuasion is the story (the fairy tale?) for middle age: maybe, just maybe, there are second acts, second chances in life. The scenes describing the writing, the reading, and the effect of Captain Wentworth’s letter are among the most moving our author ever wrote.
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