I usually end up liking the books better than their film counterparts, but it worked the other way around for Bridget Jones's Diary for me.

While I loved the movie, this book was just a bit blah. Bridget irritated me with her whining and her desperation for a man. I hope that I won't be anything like that by the time that I'm nearing the big 3-0. The diary format of the writing annoyed me, but that might just be because I prefer books that are descriptive and have wonderful narrative.

Daniel Cleaver also came off as a one-dimensional, total bastard type instead of like the irresistible, though still a bastard, charmer that Hugh Grant portrayed him to be in the movie version.

I guess it was an okay short, meaningless read, though. If it had been any longer than it was, I don't think I'd have managed to plod through it.

Overall: This was an easy read, but not worth the hype it received in my opinion.

Characters:8/10 Bridget is certainly relatable. Her family and friends are interesting as well.
Uniqueness: 5/10
Plot:6/10 Bits of action peppered throughout pages of nothing.
Cover: 5/10
Atmosphere:5/10 The constant focus on weight and dieting was overdone.
Knowledge: 7/10 I liked learning a bit about publishing.
Enjoyment: 6/10 Easy to read, but not much substance.

Not my cuppa tea.

I love reading Pride and Prejudice variations, and I picked this up because it's touted as a P&P modernization. While I see the parallels in the plot, Bridget Jones (the character) is no Elizabeth Bennet.

In fact, all of the characters in this book seem to act like 16-year-olds, including Bridget's parents and their friends. The lone exception is Mark Darcy, a wealthy and successful barrister, who is the only responsible adult in sight. I had trouble liking any of the rest of them, including Bridget herself.

She's a whiny flake, a chain-smoking, insecure adolescent emotionally (in her thirties chronologically) who is obsessed with her weight and with having a boyfriend. (Of course, considering her nightmare of a mother, it's no wonder she's a psychological mess.) Fitzwilliam Darcy's fascination with Elizabeth makes sense at the end of P&P, but Mark's interest in Bridget defies explanation.

I admit that Bridget's writing style in her "diary" is witty. She has a way with phrasing that is creative and revealing. You can understand why she could work for a publishing company. While it doesn't matter, it's actually not plausible as a true diary. The timing of some entries are only 1-2 minutes apart (in less time than it would take to write them), and her drunken entries are phonetically garbled as if she were speaking rather than writing. It's an interesting and effective narrative device, and perhaps that's the reason for the book's appeal.

But I cringed as often as I chuckled at her antics. She's careless. She drinks too much. She makes unrealistic resolutions and then goes into crushing self-flagellation when she fails. She seeks her friends' advice about everything. She plays childish games to get her boss's attention, even after it's obvious he's an ass. This is a grown woman??

This was first published in 1996 and, while it was a contemporary novel then, it seems dated to me now, 20 years later. It's also veddy, veddy British with references that a Yank like myself can't fully appreciate. I admit that I was never an unattached thirty-something, so perhaps I can't relate to the desperation people in that age group felt in 1996 (and perhaps still do).

I had not cared for the movie (well, aside from looking at Colin Firth and Hugh Grant), which I saw many years ago, but I know movies are often very different from and virtually never as good as the books they're based on, so I was willing to give this a chance. Sorry. I just don't get it.

say what you want, but i had the time of my life reading this. i’m surprised that i haven’t read this earlier because 1) bridget jones’ diary is the ultimate comfort film, and 2) this is literally the adult version of the ‘georgia nicolson’ series aka ‘angus thongs and perfect snogging’ (although this was published first, so i guess the georgia nicolson series is the teen version of bridget jones, but alas).

obviously, some of the jokes/language and the obsession with weight/calories hasn’t aged well (although that’s a bit more understandable given the more positive attitude towards diet culture in the 90s), but i kind of knew that’d be the case going into it. it was just a really fast, funny, and entertaining read, which is just what you need sometimes! also mark darcy doesn’t have as many raging tory vibes in this than in the film, so that was nice.

It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so it was lovely to meet her again. The diary entries were entertaining, but in the book it got a bit repetitive. I got fed up about reading about calories and cigarettes. But I still enjoyed the book and her antics.

I read this ages ago and getting to write a review now. I'd like to say that this was the first chick-lit I ever read and loved it. Sure Bridget is idiotic and loathes herself for her weight issues and the choices that she makes but I still laughed. I did watch the movie first and then read this book so that's why I kept on imagining Renée Zellweger doing all that Bridget did in the book.

I do think that had I not watched the movie first and read the book first, I may not have enjoyed it as much as I did. But it is still hilarious but not as heartwarming as the movie though.

4 stars

The first time I read “Bridget Jones’ Diary”, I had not read enough books, or absorbed enough pop culture, to understand how clichéd it was. I hadn’t read “Pride and Prejudice” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), so I did not realize it was a shameless ripping off of Austen’s beloved story line (the irony of Colin Firth having portrayed both Mr. Darcy and Mark Darcy – seriously, Helen Fielding, you could have tried just a little bit harder – just makes me want to smack my head against a wall). I hadn’t watched “Sex and the City” yet, so I couldn’t have known that the offensively stereotypical gay friend was just the fashionable trope you simply had to have if you were writing a story about a single woman in the 90’s. I thought it was funny and silly, and I enjoyed it mostly because I didn’t think about it at all once I was done with it and put it away. If you just read it as a junk food book, “Bridget Jones” is inoffensive and entertaining. It only becomes problematic if you look back on it and start thinking about it more deeply.

I understand that the point of creating a flawed character like Bridget was to make a very specific target readership feel better about their lives – because they (hopefully) have their shit together more than she does. She is perpetually trying to make her life better, but spends so much time whining about how awful everything is, and eating and drinking her feelings instead of actually getting up and doing something about her dissatisfactions, that nothing ever changes. That’s unfortunately not a behavior I have any patience for (in real life or in books): if you are dissatisfied with something, shut up and do something about it. It’s likely to make for a better story, anyway!

Bridget has a lot of relatable quirks, which can definitely make her endearing. I’d like to think that she is a caricature, an exaggeration of some of our weirdest habits and reactions; I know that her mountain of insecurities and self-hatred is realistic, and while her self-deprecation can be hilarious, her incapacity to think about herself in any positive light troubles me a little. And now that I think about it, I’ve met a lot of real-life Bridgets: women who let their insecurities and social expectations be the compass to every decision they make. I usually avoid them like the plague.

My cynical rear-view mirror makes me wonder how anyone ever thought books about women obsessed with their relationships with men (and eventual marriage and family) was empowering to women. It also makes me wonder how someone claiming to weigh 123 lbs can consider themselves fat; if she is right, that makes me obese by her definition… That her friends and family would keep making things worse by commenting on her damn weight constantly makes me wonder why she puts up with these toxic relationships…

I’ll stop now, because this review is harsh enough already and if I keep dissecting the book, I’ll dock another star. This book is best enjoyed as superficial, junky chick-lit. Try not to overthink it, unless you want to be a sarcastic hag like me!

I'm sure the book is funny (it is!) because I loved the movie (I still do, all three of them), I watched it so many times; so even before I begin I think I am going to like it, and as Helen said: "Adopting Bridget's lifestyle could seriously damage your health." So I mustn't love her as I do, but I do!

The book is sectioned as a diary from New Year's Eve, January to December, each month is filled with daily entries, contents:
New Year's Resolutions
January: an exceptionally bad start
February: valentine's day massacre
March: severe birthday related thirties panic
April: inner poise
May: mother-to-be
June: hah! boyfriend
July: huh
August: disintegration
September: up the fireman's pole
October: date with darcy
November: a criminal in the family
December: oh, christ

I didn't enjoy this book in an ironic way, or in a it's-good-even-though-, or I-can't-believe-I-do-but-I-perversely-can't-help-it or any other angled, roundabout, halfway indirect from behind kind of way.... No. I sat on my couch and wolfed this thing down in one sitting while laughing my ass off.

I read it last spring when I decided I was curious about what "chick-lit" was, so that I could form an opinion and generally improve my likelihood of passing as a somewhat informed member of civilization. This was not the only "chick-lit" book I attempted. I tried *Bergdorf Blondes*, the first few pages of which made me want to stab my eyes out with a rusty fork; well, maybe it made me more want to stab someone else's eyes out (Plum Sykes springs to mind), but my point is that it wasn't just bad but actually highly disturbing. Disturbing as in, does not so much shake as demolish one's faith in humanity and makes one tremble in horror at the times we're evidently living in..... I also tried *Good in Bed*, which wasn't upsetting, but did seem pretty bad, or at least definitely not for me. I even flipped open a *Shopaholic* book, which wasn't as awfully written as *Bergdorf Blondes* but did similarly make yearn for a grim Stalinist dystopia where this kind of trash just isn't permitted.

Then there was Bridget Jones.

Now, my enjoyment of this book was not uncomplicated by this terrifying "I-am-Cathy" feeling that I'm now enough of a grownup to identify with a lovably neurotic character from fluffy popular women's fiction. Because, dear bookster, identify I did. Yes. I had the 100% straightforward chick-lit experience, which I guess must be exactly this sense of recognizing your own ridiculously stereotypical feminine traits in a light novel's plucky heroine. And seriously? That's exactly what happened to me.

(Can I just explain that I'm supposed to be packing right now, which is why this is getting so long and involved? I'm not really crazy, I'm just procrastinating.) (Also, though, I do want to tell you guys about Bridget Jones and how weirdly good it was.)

There were a few things I didn't realize about BJ before I read this book. One is, she drinks too much. The other is, she smokes. I know it sounds dumb, but I think I would've felt differently knowing that, instead of just that she struggles with food. I'd sort of heard that a lot of it was about efforts to control her weight or whatever, and this typical, you know, on-again-off-again dieting, blah blah blah, and I really couldn't imagine anything less appealing, partly because that isn't a problem I identify with, and partly because does the world really need another book about a self-hating lady trying to lose weight? And why would anyone want to read something like that anyway?

Well, I would. And I did! Because it's not really about her trying to lose weight (although I guess it kind of is), it's more about the constant, compulsive agony self-inflicted by a woman cursed not only with zero impulse control and a ravenous id, but also obsessively high standards for herself and a ridiculous amount of guilt and self-scrutiny about virtually everything she does.

So yeah basically, this book is about me and a lot (not all) of my close female friends. And it really, really -- I want you to hear this from me -- truly gets at some stuff about certain ways that a lot of women tend to act and think, which, I'm sorry, all my fancy feminisms and gender theory aside, let's be honest, a lot (not all) of us are very crazy in some classically female ways, and Fielding just NAILS a lot of those. Plus she's very funny.

Is this the greatest book ever written? No. But it was fun to read.

Obviously, not all men act one way, and not all women act like Bridget Jones. However, I certainly do, and that must be the reason I got such a kick out of this book.

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

I read this book a number of years ago after it was recommended to me by a friend and ever since that moment I have been wishing that I could go back in time and smack her over the head and tell her to take the book and shove it.

I found the book to be deeply irritating with a central character that was nether funny nor likable. In any way shape or form. In fact Bridget Jones has got to be one of the worst literary characters I have ever come across as she is in turns a moaning, whiny, boring, inane, deeply shallow, smug and extremely tedious individual.

In the course of reading this book I found myself not caring about her or her irritating 'problems' and at many points I simply rolled my eyes at her stupid behaviour which in turn made me unable to warm to any of the other characters (although I think that was also down to the fact that they don't have an original bone in their fictional bodies) in a story that is essentially nothing more than girl meets boy, girl has difficulty getting boy, has a dalliance with someone else and then eventually get's the boy. With a lot of unnecessary profanity, naval gazing and whinging along the way.

It's chick lit of the worst kind and how anyone can hold it up as a book about the difficulties faced by modern (feminist) women is beyond me. If I ever came across a 'Bridget' in real life then I would be deeply concerned for the human race as all the book is concerned about is appearance, getting a man, swearing and sex.

Completely devoid of humanity substance and totally misses the point about the troubles of dealing with the difficulties faced by real modern women in everyday life. Best avoided!

This was an interesting book. I like when you are able to see something right from the narrators point of view. I think some things in the book were a little hard to understand. I think that all the words should have been written out, I know it's supposed to be a Diary, but I think that everyone writes differently. This made it a little hard to follow at times.