Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Austen is harder to get into and I understand why people have a problem there. She was probably the greatest prose stylist before the 20th century and her stuff is brilliant, But there's a huge but to her work: she was writing exclusively for 18th & 19th-century upper class British aristocrats and spends absolutely zero time explaining setting or context. As a result, if you don't have a detailed knowledge of everything an 18th century British aristocrat would know, if you don't have (for example) a detailed knowledge of exactly what the differences are between a gig, a phaeton, a curricle, a barouche, and a landau, you'll miss three-quarters of her jokes. Hell, Northanger Abbey is *hilarious* -- if you've the read ten or fifteen other gothic novels that Austen was parodying. If you haven't, though, you just won't get the joke, so she'll come across as really boring.