Pride cometh before my fall in prejudice

So, here's the thing: no sooner do I post my first entry to this blog, about my intentions to read the first chapter of a famous novel each day, for 365 days, but I discover that 2012 is the National Year of Reading in Australia. Well, what do you know! How cool is that...a year dedicated to the noble art of reading, and I have just begun a blog about such a past-time. (Check out the official website at this link

hthttp://www.love2read.org.au/tp:// )

Today's chapter contains one of the most famous opening sentences of any book. Seriously, it would rank up there with Dickens' "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." and "In the beginning..." As soon as I started reading Pride and Prejudice, my mind was cast back to Year 10 English, and Mrs Gamble's attempts to introduce us to the finer points of being a gentleman. No sooner had I escaped high school than I took a unit in English Literature at college and was again confronted with Austen's most famous novel.

I'm a bit older now, and hopefully a little more mature, that I can finally appreciate this book for its characterisations, its sense of time and place and, most significantly, the brooding, barely suppressed tension between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy. But for now, it's the first line, from the first chapter, that allows me to truly set aside my prejudice:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Oh man, not another blog!"

There is something about the experience of opening up a new book and diving into the world inside that strikes a chord with me. Put simply, I love reading! Usually, I have several books that I am consuming at the one time, as if my library were like a Sizzler's bar and I am determined not to miss out on anything on the menu...

But it's the opening pages that never fail to captivate. You can tell so much about a book - whether it is good or bad, whether it will strike or chord or leave you feelilng cold and indifferent - in those first few words, lines and paragraphs. And so I have decided to spend some of my reading time, over the next 365 days, reading the first chapter from some classic novels. And each day (or thereabouts), I will record my responses to these opening pages.

"What's the point?", you might very well ask. Perhaps it's the discipline that comes with the daily dose of chapter consumption and then briefly blogging about the experience. Or maybe, deep down, I just want to be able to say, when it comes to those dinner parties one occasionally attends on a Saturday night, "Oh yes, Austen's writing in Pride and Prejudice was so much better than when she wrote Persuasion."

And just as our reading of any book elicits certain reactions, so too this blog will hopefully prompt comments and criticisms, bouquets and brickbats, about either the books themselves, or my writings in response to them. It's likely that my reflections will be not just about the books but also about this entire blogging process!

(For the record, I have just read the first chapter in Persuasion but can make no comparison with it and Pride and Prejudice...that's tomorrow night's chapter and blog).

(PPS. The opening headline, and the post itself, is dedicated to my son Brodie, who had an immense love of books, and his cousins, Eli and Ethan, who are now discovering the joy of children's literature. Lately, they have kept us all amused with the expression: "Oh man..." as a sign of dismay and disappointment in a whole range of situations.)