Hilary will be proud of me. I finally read Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. Parts were quite funny, but overall the book was a bit. . . risque for my tastes.
It follows Bridget (duh, it's her diary!) through a year of romantic mayhem. What you might not know is that it is also loosely based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. There are some changes of course. For one thing, I could see how Elizabeth would go for Wickham. Why anyone would go for the equivalent (found in the characters of Daniel and Julian) is beyond me. I had them pegged as duds from the beginning.
One of my absolute favorite parts is when one of Bridget's friends decides he is going on a diet. He asks her how many calories a person needs to stay alive and proceeds to quiz her on how many calories any given food item has. It's quite funny. There are other funny passages and ideas as well, but I don't know if the goods outweigh the bads. That's my take.
I am ashamed I missed this. Ashamed. You'll be pleased to know I couldn't stand the third one. It was all debauchery and no charm. What especially drove me nuts was that Bridget in the third book was the Bridget of the movies- clumsy and dumb. Everything I liked about the first two books was gone- her wit, the reinvented Austen plots. What I always liked about these books, was that Mark Darcy loved her with all her faults- just the way she was, as the line goes. It's the vulgarity I can do without.
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