Emma, by Jane Austen. A review

This is my second Jane Austen novel, the first was Pride & Prejudice, that I read last summer, and although both novels are great, Emma is deeper

Unlike Pride & Prejudice, that progressed a bit slowly and was a bit boring at some intervals, Emma too unexpected turns sometimes

I tried to write a summary of the novel as I usually like to do, but this novel is very complex, and has many character that the summary would take 2 or 3 pages and I'm sure that would be a very good thing, however  really recommend reading wikipedia's summary, they say everything better than I can






however I found the 1996 Emma movie on youtube, here is part 1, I didn't watch it all yet, but part one is very similar to the novel, and probably the rest of the movie would to, so at least watch the movie if you don't have time to read the novel



what I'm very happy about is that Emma Mr knightly & Frank Churchill looks the way I imagined them (except that I imagined her with black hair) hope I'll find the full movie online

there is only one criticism to the novel. I always say that great writer seem to run out of ink or paper at the end of their stories :D the ending was very quick an unconvincing, Harriet & Emma were both in love with Mr Knightly, but when Harriet gets her second proposal from Mr Robert Martin, she immediately accepts as if she weren't in love with another man few pages ago!! that gives the novel its happy ending without breaking the friendship relation between Emma & Harriet

I'm always in favor of happy endings, and I'm not against a happy ending for Harriet, but, I imagined that Harriet would never be happy ever after, she has broken her heart 2 times already, and it shouldn't have been that easy for her to accept that her best friend is marrying the man she loved Harriet simply married another man and moved on, because he proposed for the second time, not because of her social situation or of feeling that Mr Martin is the best man she can aspire to, this in my opinion would have been a more convincing happy ending

still I really recommend reading the novel I even think it should be mandatory taught to all girls at school, (I'm not kidding). it shows how you might be over self confident with your speculations that you might not see what is going on clearly, it shows how easily you can be confused on who likes who,  and how easy it is to almost destroy a persons life thinking that you are doing them good

“Brand failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time” book review

I’ve been reading this book for almost 2 month now, not because its long, but because it has stories about a hundred famous brands and how they failed or are expected to fail, each brand story is discussed in an average of 3 pages in an interesting way and ends with a “what is learn from the failure story?” which sometimes is a bit silly and contains some repeated material, but it still give a lot of insight

I used to read a “story” or more each day and that’s is why it took me too long, to finish but that was the best thing about the book since the story would take around 10 minutes to read and that makes reading a possibility during school days and maybe exams

The book is very helpful for marketing students, or for anyone interested in the marketing fields, actually I read it because my marketing professor recommended it, as it further enforces the marketing basics and rules through examples that you probably would not forget

The interesting thing that after reading the book you see (or at least I sow) that when companies corrupt or fall, it’s usually because of its heads. That is simple and well known, and the case of the fall of Enron is an undeniable proof on the effects of mal management, but this book shows you that companies don’t need financial managers to manipulate its earnings, or any form of financial scandal to fall, they just need a bad idea embraced by its top management, or an arrogant CEO, and baaaam, everything goes down regardless of how efficient everything was, that idea is not widely spread among the business students I met, we usually believe that well established companies with a good market share won’t easily fall, but that is not the case at all, in fact the arrogance of these companies and their self-esteem is what drives them down

It also showed the real power of marketing, I used to believe that if a product is good it will sell itself with no need for intensive marketing, that is true and the book proves that in many cases, but in others, if your marketing is not good, if customers don’t actually understand what the product is for, or if you unintentionally communicate a bad message through ineffective ads, you are screwed, regardless of how genius the product is

You’ll really think about all the concepts you know about economics, business & marketing, and in some cases many of these concepts will get integrated and more interesting, I recommend reading this book, specially if you would read a story or two from it each day, so you don’t spend a lot of time, and have something to think about all day

Please share your thoughts if you have read the book, or after you read it