"The Annotated Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapar)

You know what?  I really liked Mansfield Park this time through :-o  The first time I read it, maybe 15 years ago or so, I found it terribly dull.  The second time I read it, about ten years ago, I found Fanny annoying.  But this time, I thought Fanny was a lovely character, and I wasn't bored a bit!

I think that was partly because of the annotations -- as always, I learned a LOT from those.  But it was also because I read this as part of the #JaneAustenDeepDive2024 group buddy read on Instagram.  Discussing the book with other readers really helped me settle my own opinions about the characters, and especially about the romance between Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram.  I've never had much patience with Edmund before, because he seems so ridiculously unable to see the truth about either Fanny or Mary Crawford (or many other people around him), but this time, I could see how that is not necessarily a character flaw -- he sees the good in people and disregards the rest, which doesn't make him dumb.  It just makes him kind of endearingly naïve.  While Fanny did sometimes displease me a little with how she tends to do the reverse and see bad things in people while ignoring their better points, I didn't find her completely annoying this time.  In fact, I enjoyed the book!  Yay!  Total win.

Particularly Good Bits:

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply (p. 428).

"Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how.  It is a part of an Englishman's constitution.  His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct" (p. 606).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for the text for some discussions of adultery, and PG-13 for the annotations for some franker (but still tasteful) discussions of sexual matters. 

This has been my 29th book read and reviewed for my 4th Classics Club list.