Bridget Jones #1

Le journal de Bridget Jones

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Il est vrai que les femmes modernes et célibataires ont également leurs soucis ! Helen Fielding a choisi de nous les narrer à travers le journal de Bridget Jones, 29 ans, célibataire sans enfant et aux terribles angoisses. Exemples : son poids à surveiller chaque jour, le nombre de cigarettes fumées, les calories ingurgitées, les pensées négatives et par-dessus le marché une mère extravagante et adultère. Bref, dans un élan de machisme incontrôlable, on pourrait suggérer que ce livre est surtout destiné aux lectrices de Elle et à la rigueur – ce qui est nouveau – à ceux de Men's Health. Seulement voilà, derrière l'humour pointe l'ironie ou les remarques acerbes sur la gente masculine. Car Miss Bridget, si tourmentée qu'elle soit par son aspect physique et ses carences affectives, est également une féministe, mais de son temps. Elle assume seule sa vie professionnelle et sociale et refuse catégoriquement que les hommes viennent dans son giron pour se faire consoler, la dominer ou l'embobiner.

Ce petit livre, rafraîchissant comme un bouquet de roses pleines d'épines, est pour les hommes un complément indispensable à la lecture de Nick Hornby (Haute Fidélité) traitant des affres du célibat masculin. Pour les femmes, il viendra conforter quelques certitudes ou leur donnera des pistes à suivre. --Stellio Paris

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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April 17,2025
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Prepare yourselves, it's about to get personal up in here.
So, I've never seen the movie of Bridget Jones's Diary, so I thought I would read the highly acclaimed book before doing so and, to my great surprise, I ended up hating almost everything about it. I 100% understand why people like it - it's funny and relatable and reminiscent of the great decade that was the 90's, but because of a purely personal problem, this book made me feel like garbage and therefore made me absolutely loathe my reading experience.
Bridget is always writing down her weight and saying she's fat, but the thing is, it's not just herself saying this. Friends, family and other characters also call her fat throughout the novel and then I look at me, who weighs over 15 kilos more than Bridget, and it honestly made me feel like crap. I have already been struggling with confidence and self-loathing because over the past couple of years I've put on 25 kilos due to changing medications for my mental health, so this book honestly just made it worse. Is this what people on the street think about me when I walk by? Do my friends and family secretly discuss how much weight I've put on behind my back? It honestly took me back to when members of my own family were making snide remarks about my weight or offering suggestions for how exercise and dieting could benefit me, thinking they were helping when really, it made it ten times worse.
I was 3/4 of the way through the book, when I thought to myself, has anything plot-wise actually happened? Nope. Just a bunch of damaging self-hatred that triggered my own.
I get that a lot of people love the book and that's fine, I totally get it, but for me, it ended up being a damaging and destructive novel that ended up being quite triggering for my depression.
Let me know any thoughts you guys have on this book or any of the things I've discussed!

Around the Year in 52 Books Challenge Notes:
- 20. A book with a first name in the title
April 17,2025
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Originally posted on A Frolic Through Fiction

n  Ohhhhhhhhhhh how I REALLY didn’t get along with this book. n

Here I was, just coming out of a reading slump, thinking to myself “I need something kind of fun and light-hearted to pull me out of this last bit”. I remembered I had this book for years now. And I mean years. I also remembered that the film – while it’s not necessarilyn   goodn, it’s a guilty pleasure kind of thing for me. So I figured it was about time I read this book.

Ugh.

I just…no. I didn’t like this book.

I hate comparing books to their movies but with this one, it just has to be done. The film is fun and something silly to watch. The book was so incredibly self-pitying and miserable. What’s funny in the film is only worth an eye-roll in the book. I didn’t like any of the characters in the book, but Daniel I n  especiallyn hated. If he spoke to me the way he did to Bridget, he would be out of my life as quick as a flash, the manipulative tool.

Not even my favourite scene from the film is in here.

But enough with the book-to-film comparison.


Because even without the film giving me some idea of what to expect beforehand, I know I still wouldn’t have liked this book. It’s just way too downhearted for me.

I mean, it’s the diary of a thirty-something year old woman who just complains about everything. And yes, I get that it’s her diary. That’s what it’s there for. Vent your thoughts all you like. But you’d think that in AN ENTIRE YEAR, she’d have something good to say at some point, instead of just lots of self-pity, counting calories and the occasional motivational optimism (that’d last for only a paragraph).

Again, I get that it’s a diary. But everything revolves around her. Every single time someone else in this book has a problem – no matter how serious it was – Bridget would only think about how it’d affect her. Her parents had a problem, and she actually said “Am I to be the tragic victim of a broken home now, on top of everything else?” Excuse me – What about how your parents are dealing with this?! AGGHHH.

You’d think that someone with a job and home in London would be relatively happy. Or at least grateful. But no. Apparently your life is pointless if you’re a woman without a husband by the age of 30. But then while thinking this, she and her friends give feminism a bad name by hating and bashing the male gender (OH, unless they’re gay of course) and claiming their generalised rants to be “feminism”. No. It’s not. I know this book was written a while ago and feminism is still a thing being built and understood, but I can’t help but think it’s books like this that make people think all feminists are “man-haters”.

The same goes for the phrase used time and time again in this book: “oh my god I’m so depressed”.

NO. YOU’RE. NOT. You’re miserable for a bit because you didn’t get a phone call or something, yes. I get how bloody negative you are. But you do not have depression. That’d be a different story altogether. Plus there’s no need to say it so many times.

And I n  known that I can’t relate to this. I’m 18 years old – not a 30 something year old who’s worried about being an unlovable spinster for the rest of their life. But quite frankly, I don’t ever want to relate to Bridget Jones. I never want to get to a point where I will count every single calorie, weight gain, cigarette, alcohol unit, or times I’ve called someone. I never want to have such a miserable mind set. I never want to feel like I have to change myself in order for people like me.

Honestly, this isn’t a bad book. It was awfully written or anything like that. I can see why some people might enjoy it. Why some might relate to it.

But personally, I didn’t enjoy this book at all. It was way too negative for me, and I’d have rather just watched the film again.

I know this is a very negative review on my part, so I just want to say sorry if I’ve offended anyone. I really don’t mean to. But I can’t help not liking a book. It just happens sometimes.

n  Rated 1/5 starsn
April 17,2025
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n  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.”n

as the film adaptation is one of my favorite comfort movies, i just had to read the book that started it all... and while i did enjoy it, it's one of the rare cases where i can confidently say the movie is definitely better, both in terms of the story and also the characters. bridget jones (movie version) is just so lovable and i didn't really get to see as much of that in the book.

April 17,2025
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Wow. This did not age well.

I hadn't read this befire, but I think ill stick to the film. Bridget Jones thinking 9 stone 7lbs is fat is probably the reason I had so many issues with my weight as a teenager!!

I liked the extra material in this from the author but overall I'm not glad I read it
April 17,2025
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Like our narrator, both funny and deceptively stylish.



(I have not seen the film).
April 17,2025
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For me, reading this book was exactly like watching a season of "Ally McBeal" - when I laughed, I laughed outloud and thoroughly enjoyed myself. And occasionally I did allow myself to care who ends up with whom. But I held a grudge against the main character throughout for being so ludicrously insecure and vulnerable to vulgar materialism.

Like Ally, Bridget is a self-proclaimed feminist who cannot hold onto a single tenet of the concept long enough to spare herself any plummets on her emotional rollercoaster of second-guessing and self-scrutiny. Many of the women with which she surrounds herself are in fact far more self-confident than she is, but there are no signs of it rubbing off.

Of course I was satisfied that in the end she was swept away by a diamond in the rough instead of the first greasy charmer, but it annoyed me to no end that she was so very passively swept away. Although Mark Darcy did let her know how impressed he was with her profile as a well-read feminist and her willingness to show up at a party in a bunny suit, she prefers to tell her diary what a turn-on it is to see him take control of her mother's legal fate in a swaggering, authoritarian way. Like Ally McBeal, Bridget does not see a boyfriend as a partner but rather the constant cat to her mouse.

It's hard to be a working, single woman in today's modern society - yes. It's difficult to find a soul mate amid all the social pressure to simply find someone - yes. But obsessing over weight, appearance, and everyone else's opinion of you is an adolescent phase that can and must be overcome. Otherwise, on the microcosmic level, feminism has failed you and it's dishonest to claim it as a guise.

Despite that however, dishonesty can still make for a very funny, light read. I picked this book because the theme of infanticide in the other novel I had going was getting to be too much for me, and on that level it did not disappoint.

April 17,2025
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Demult nu am citit o carte în care protagonista face haz de necaz de viața ei și de toate situațiile nasoale prin care trece.

Am râs în hohote pe alocuri. Am ascultat această carte, naratorul fiind o actriță care citea pe roluri și cu diferite intonații, cu mare interes. Aș mai fi ascultat vreo câteva ore. Monologuri sincere, replici dure și o viață de-a-ndoaselea pe care o condimentează cu umor și alcool
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