I absolutely love Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey - love, love, love it! I will admit that a fair bit of my affection comes from the fact that quite a lot of the novel is set in Bath, one of my favourite places in the world.
So, when AustenProse started the Go Gothic reading month of Northanger Abbey I was in! Any excuse to re-read a Jane Austen novel and to travel to Bath through fiction, particularly as I was actually in Bath a little over 12 months ago myself and I have been mourning the anniversary of my time there - wishing I was there again right now.
I do love Northanger Abbey for other reasons apart from the setting. I really like the heroine, Catherine Morland. For a start I can truly relate to a young girl obsessed by the world of books - particularly novels - I love reading about her immersion in the world of her reading and how sometimes this carries over (a little too far!) into her reality. I probably do exactly the same thing a lot of the time and I'm not 17 anymore!
I also love that there are characters to strongly dislike in Northanger Abbey too, John and Isabella Sharpe and Captain Tilney (although my strongest dislike is reserved for Isabella - what a horrid, horrid girl!).
My favourite Jane Austen novel after Persuasion (also set partly in Bath....).
