Rating: 
Summary: A refreshing way of describing a hard and unjust reality...
Review: I am married but deal (because of job) with many single women. I also know the world is made for "normal-married" people. Most singles over 35 I know live Bridget's nightmare. Fielding's is a refreshing way of describing a hard and unjust reality.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful! Smashing! Fabulous!
Review: Just when I thought that nobody understood what it was like to be a single girl in a world filled with Smug Marrieds, along comes our gal Bridget Jones! Helen Fielding has captured the heart and soul of singletons everywhere with this witty and thoroughly engaging novel. I hardly put it down at all once I started reading it. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for some great tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek humor and great singleton emotions abound!
Rating:
Summary: It made me want to yell "Bastards!" over and over again.
Review: This book belongs on your bookshelf. Oh joy. Oh happiness of happiness. I laughed out loud many many times, this is a great non-intellectual book to read late a night right before you drift off to sleep. The way Bridget knows the exact number of calories in every type of food you could think of but does not know her times tables is just too funny. I love the girl, she's completely into all of that self-improvement stuff that no normal being can possibly pull off. The way she constantly fails at her New Year's Resolutions reminds me so much of myself. I heard there's a sequal. Hmmmm... that should be interesting. Can't wait to pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Calling all girly girls...
Review: I loved this book! This is one of those, I just got dumped and all boys suck, kind of reads. You need a glass of wine, chocolate, and your favorite blanket to read this one. Made me proud to be a strong, independent, beautiful woman. Bridget goes through so many life altering experiences, all the while making sure she counts her calories. Hilarious! I highly recommend every woman between 18 and 35 read this immediately!
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent book - so sweet and realistic and adorable!
Review: I first saw the movie, which I loved, and thought that the book - as usual - would be even better. And it is! It's great. I don't even think the movie is too big a spoiler at all. Bridget is precisely the sort of girl that ANY woman should be able to relate to. She comes off as the worst version of herself at percisely the wrong moments, even though she means to be increadible as she really is -- a feeling OH-so-familiar to just about everyone i know :)I did begin to get concerned about the more or less blatent rip off from Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice that is just all over the book (c'm on! Mr. Darcy?!), but it REALLY didn't bother me one bit. The book is magical. Read it! You won't be sorry! :)
Rating: 
Summary: has anyone NOT read this book?
Review: Like so many others, I've read Bridget Jones. Both before and afterwords, I read other books about twenty-something single neurotic women. Since I actually don't smoke incessantly and am completely non-weight obsessed, many of Bridget's qualities were more annoying than anything. But you just gotta love Bridget no matter what. In the movie, this is played out full-force, making Bridget more loveable than she is in the book. As heroines go, Bridget is adorable, light, and eternally optimistic. If you're looking for something a little darker, more realistic vision of loneliness, check out In the Drink instead by Kate Christenson. But if you're going to read the book and see the movie, the rule of book first does apply here. The movie really just picks up on Bridget's sunnier, more laughable qualities.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely funny
Review: I like the way it was written (as a diary). I couldn't stop laughing. I can't wait to see the movie and read the sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: How Times Change
Review: Yet more recognition (richly deserved) is accorded to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" by this contemporary British knock-off. Besides using P&P's plot, "Bridget Jones's Diary" is almost a first novel by a woman (actually a second novel) and it also follows Austen's semi-epistolary style by using the form of a diary (vs. e-mail in "You've Got Mail"). The principal change is that the woman in Elizabeth's dramatic role (now named Bridget) has incorporated the behavior (should I say the character?) of Elizabeth's younger sister, Lydia. Elizabeth-Lydia is still the heroine, so the mother -- Lydia's grown-up image in P&P -- takes Lydia's accustomed place in the story's dramatic crisis. Elizabeth's new look could be either a brilliant commentary on -- or an unconscious portrayal of -- our times, I'm not sure which. Does the novelist mean to imply that, as goes the language, so goes the character? Even though the loss of stature in our heroine is somewhat saddening, Bridget-Elizabeth-Lydia still earns the reader's compassion, as she should according to Jane Austen (per Elizabeth's commentary in P&P on her father's treatment of her mother). And "Bridget Jones's Diary" is very funny. NB: While the novel's reference is to P&P -- a very classy classic, the Bridget Jones film resorts to generic clichés from melodramas and even action movies. I guess to be commercially viable a movie must essentially be violins and fistfights, with the title it's released under serving to attract ticket buyers but not to influence the content. Thus, the film fits the novel in Bridget Jones's case about as well as in the "Bonfire of the Vanities" fiasco (i.e., not very well).
Rating: 
Summary: Story of 30-Something Simpleton
Review: This book was pretty good, but I can't say it really lived up to all of the media commotion. The story of a British 30-something woman, who believes that life would be perfect (or at least bearable) if she could stop smoking, limit her alcohol consumption level drastically, find a boyfriend who was not an emotional 'nit'-witt, and lose seven pounds. Each entry starts with a list of Bridget's progress or failure to accomplish on these levels. The book is rather funny as it takes us through her emotional roller-coaster of bad boyfriends, stiff boyfriends, young boyfriends, and every other combination of male hormones imaginable, while contemplating the benefits of remaining a spinster and becoming a 'Smug Married' and even the possibility that she may be pregnant. We hear about her mother's hilarious exploits as the adulterous girlfriend of a Portuguese smuggler. We also get a glimpse of Bridget's private dislike of a body that is bulkier than she might prefer. The benefits to this book are that it is quite normal. We meet a woman who has a job, has friends, and has a dating life. She gets drunk, has sexual relationships, and has insecurities about her appearance--all of these things happening within a moderate degree and not blooming into dangerous, consuming obsessions. She gets embarrassed has superficial crises and then moves on. It is a light and humorous read--although tedious in parts--about the life of a woman who is determined to have it all, but will not cause great tragedy to get it. On the other hand, there is a negative aspect to this book which is rather disconcerting. Is this all that a person in her thirties can amount to? There is a part of Bridget which really does just seem like an overgrown teenager, still obsessed with boys, shopping, and weight. Is this the way a typical adult should be acting? Part of you will say no, part of you will say yes. But overall this is a good read, which is simply meant to be taken lightly.
Rating:
Summary: Best book i have read in a long time
Review: This book was exellent.Cant wait to read the sequel.I wish she would have talked about her grandmother more.She was one of the best characters is the book.
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