Other Stories

Feminist Feasting

Typepad seems to have undergone a transformation, so forgive me if this post takes on a random variety of incarnations before it looks like usual. There are all sorts of weird buttons here in the "compose" page, and it may take me a while to get used to it.

Of course I may get it right first time and you lot will never know the difference, in which case, ignore me.

I am not at work. I am at home. I am sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knee with an open notepad and a pile of table-thumping feminist books beside me. It's a beautiful thing. Having reached the end of my first year of the MA, I am being a disgusting swot and doing some reading around what I want to do for my dissertation next year, ie, Victorian feminist literature. My self-prescribed reading list between now and October includes:

• Cassandra by Florence Nightingale
• The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar
• The New Woman and Other Emancipated Woman Plays
• The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siecle by Sally Ledger (who teaches on my MA, I am such a goodie-goodie)
• The Feminist History Reader edited by Sue Morgan
• A Widening Sphere edited by Martha Vicinus
• Suffer and be Still: Women in the Victorian Age also edited by Martha Vicinus
• Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Victorian Writing by Women on Women edited by Susan Hamilton
• A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles, and Drama of the 1890s edited by Carolyn Christensen Nelson

Never mind some re-reading of various novels and short stories by Victorian women. There's no doubt I've set myself quite a task, and I fear that as a result there will be fewer contemporary fiction reviews within these blog pages, but this is nothing if not an honest account of what I read. I'm sure I'll manage to slip a few contemporary treats in along the way. :)

Nearly finished The Story of a Marriage - only about 60 pages to go. Had a busy day yesterday and so didn't get the chance to read quite as much as I hoped. Today, hopefully more. Am going into London soon and hopefully the journey each way will give me ample time to polish it off.

Sweet F A

Finally, I can delve back into my piles of unread books because I'VE FINISHED THE ESSAY! Woo! I'm handing it in tonight, I can't wait.

There is the small matter of a five week reading project with a presentation at the end of it to prepare for, but this weekend, I say here and now, will not see a jot of MA work being done. This will be the first weekend for bloody ages where I have had to either study, go to a work thing, have anyone to stay, or just generally have plans. We have no plans at all, absolutely nada between Friday evening and Monday morning. And do you know what we plan to do? Nothing. Sweet, beautiful nothing.

I am going to wander around the house in joggy bottoms and a band tshirt and bare feet. I shall read at least a book and a half, hopefully. Boyfriend will tinker with his new guitar (to be used specifically for slide, I hear), and no doubt we'll manage to stagger along to the pub for a couple of pints. They have green beer at the moment. Something to do with unripened hops, apparently.

I'm also going to await the arrival of my latest purchase: The Complete Novels and Stories of Kate Chopin. Bliss, I tell thee.

The Sad Shepherd - WB Yeats

Today, beloved readers, we're going high brow. High brow-ish at any rate. With my current strict reading diet of all things Yeatsian, I felt I couldn't not have a post about it. However, I wanted to spare you my cackhanded literary analysis, so I have decided to go minimalist and share with you my favourite Yeats poem (so far... I haven't read everything he's written). It is one that I wasn't familiar with before I started work on this essay, but I've been finding myself reading it every day. Enjoy.

The Sad Shepherd (1885, published 1886)

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend,
And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway:
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!
The sea swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.
He fled the persecution of her glory
And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,
Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.
But naught they heard, for they are always listening,
The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Sought once again the shore, and found a shell,
And thought, I will my heavy story tell
Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send
Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;
And my own tale again for me shall sing,
And my own whispering words be comforting,
And lo! my ancient burden may depart.
Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;
But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone
Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan
Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

Bwah ha ha ha...

Things have being getting a bit spooky over in Kirsty Towers.

I’ve just started the second module of my course, entitled ‘The Victorian Supernatural’, which just sounds so amazing I begin gibbering and tripping over my words as soon as I think about it. Seances! Fairies! Vampires! Blood! Ghosts! The Victorians lived in an age plagued by religious doubt so they turned to The Other Side readily, hungry for reassurance and/or answers. All of which seems to somehow correspond with the age we are living in today. The beginning of the 21st century has seen reams of papers dedicated to the discussion of religion, in one way or another. Whether it be the current flood of atheist polemics, or dissecting the relationship between the western/Christian world and Islam, or the millions of people fascinated with contacting the dead (usually on TV, I notice), we seem to be as desperate for answers as we ever were.

Which helps to account for the fact that gothic tales, in print or on celluloid, are selling as well as ever. Sweeney Todd is taking the world by storm for a start. I’ve agreed to go and see it with some work colleagues, but I am the world’s most squeamish person, and I’ve already read something about brain splatting on concrete. Urgh. See, the thing is, I can quite happily read about all those things*. I’d like to think that I have a pretty good imagination, but my brain knows I’m a bit sensitive to anything gory, so sensors it out for me, which is good of it. Which is just as well, given my current reading matter.

I have devoured Dracula over the last few days, including several nightime stints in my reading chair (I’ve had the cold. I can never sleep when I have the cold), and really enjoyed it. I have read it before, during a particularly hot summer in Cornwall five years ago, so it was much more atmospheric to sit in the dark on a cold January night reading about the evil Count and the amazing Professor Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker and Dr Seward and Quincey Morris and Mina, not to mention poor Lucy Westenra, the innocent vampire bride. I think I’m going to write this term’s essay on Victorian gothic literature, and am preparedly gorging myself on a blood-rich diet of Sweeney Todd, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and a book of Bram Stoker’s short stories, Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales. I am also relishing The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic Tales… Cranford they ain’t.

So, before the nights start getting too much shorter, I am going to happily sit and freak myself out a bit. And probably have quite a lot of nightmares.

* Apart from when I tried to read American Psycho. Eek! Never got to the end. In fact, gave the book away fairly quickly. Urgh urgh urgh. I actually felt physically sick.

I am back! Hello!

Well, apologies for the radio silence. It has all been very hectic at Kirsty Towers. Boyfriend has been sick (though the jury is out on whether it was a nasty stomach bug or the re-heated chilli he ate the evening before he fell ill), I am behind on all matters domestic, and I'm working on a rather important essay for university. All that and the small matter of a full time job.  So, sorry about that.

But I'm back, bright eyed (nearly) and bushy tailed (sort of). I haven't managed to finish What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn yet, as I am momentarily paused just over half way through to allow for university reading.  However, I am enjoying it. Reminds me of the ambition I had for approximately 10 minutes when I was a child to be a private detective (quickly superceeded by the ambition to be a writer, which I still have, and which I am still no closer to realising). I imagine that my Mickey would have been Snuffie the Hedgehog. Never got as far as staking out the St Enoch Centre though. Let's face it, I was never going to hack it as a private detective.

I am, though, reading a fascinating book for my essay: The World for a Shilling: How the Great Exhibition of 1851 Shaped a Nation by Michael Leapman. It's incredibly readable, and just really, really interesting. My copy is from the university library so I looked into buying my own copy as I imagine that it might be a book I go back to time and time again. From my preliminary (non-private) investigations it would seem that it out of print, or at least currently unavailable. Amazon marketplace, here I come. I guess it can't have sold that well if it's out of print already (the paperback came out in 2002). Shame - the reviews on the back cover are excellent, and the book itself is really well written and a fantastically enjoyable read. Sad.

And so Christmas approaches. It has crept up on me this year. Last night I finally got around to buying the last of my Christmas cards and wrapping paper. I have some presents but nowhere near all. I can't be bothered putting a tree up because I'm going up to Glasgow for Christmas itself, and the mogs will only climb it every five minutes. Bah humbug, etc. Plus, I'm working right up to the 21st, so I'm hardly going to be at home anyway. Instead, once I get them tested by the facilities people, I'm putting fairy lights up round my desk. At least that way I'll get the benefit. Hmph.

Next week is the Week of Christmas Parties. Oh, my poor liver. But, I have bought A Dress (gads!) that I shall wear with Heels (bejeesus!) and I will Do My Hair and Make-Up (who are you, and what have you done with Kirsty?). I will probably feel like a transvestite the whole time, but one has to make an effort, doesn't one?

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Now, this is better. What a novel! Dickens's pal wrote an absolulte stormer with this, his fourth published novel.

You all know the story I'm sure, so I shant bore you with my inexpert rehashing of it, but really, what more could you want? Crime! Poison! Shady international gangsters! Fake names! Kidnap! Intrigue! Dastardly Counts! Fey girls swooning! Lunatic asylums! Creaking Stays! Trickery! Pygmies! All this and fantastically written too. Too good to be true? Oh no, my friends, oh no.

The archetypal page-turner to which all crime fiction must owe a debt of gratitude, it paved the way for imitators everywhere as the Original And Best Sensation Novel. And was a sensation it was back in 1859 when it started appearing in the periodical All the Year Round, of which a certain Mr C Dickens was the proprietor. By the time that the last number appeared in 1860, there were Woman in White themed mugs, merchandise and even waltzes. An alarming number of babies were named Walter, and in my sources are correct, one of the most popular names for sinister-looking moggies was Fosco.

I wish I'd thought of that. Even though my two are female.

Oh be-still my beating heart. What a treasure this book is (though Dickens *just* pips it to the post, I have to say. Close run thing though). Victorian fiction is a marvellous thing. Still can't imagine it as a musical though, I have to say. Plays of the book have been appearing for years and years but... a musical? I may be a philistine or a purist, but I just can't see it.  Not hugely sure I want to, either.

Vouchers, highlighters and real ale

What ho.

I have had a very quiet weekend, punctuated mainly by trips to the pub. On Saturday night, as I forced Boyfriend to sit through the rugby, I made a concession to his interests and had my first proper real ale. Half a pint of Swing Low (timely), and half a pint of Old Bog something-or-other. I prefered the really dark ones, where he prefers his light and refreshing apparently. Ultimately, though, I'm still a lager girl who occasionally has a night on the cider.

Other than that, Boyfriend developed the devil's own cold and spent basically all of Sunday in bed, sneezing the loudest sneezes I've ever heard. He kept frightening the cats. By the end of the day, Zadie was running away even when he took the in-take of breath before the sneeze. Meanwhile, I was being a diligent student, writing up lecture notes and making a decent start on my reading for this week. This week's lecture is on feminism, so I'm in my element. Also had the shocking revelation that Boyfriend had never used a highlighter pen. Highlighting things is a compulsion of mine, so I quickly rectified the situation and got him to  highlight a few passages on married women's rights (or lack of them) in the 19th century. He took to it very well, I might add.

I even had a new set of highlighter pens. I have recently come into a small fortune in WH Smith vouchers because my dad, on a recent trip back to Blighty, found a stash that he had accumulated over various Christmasses and birthdays. Living in WH Smith-less Oslo, he very kindly donated them to me. Being one of the world's more unashamed geeks I took a wander up to my local store on Saturday morning and purchased more stationery than is probably decent. Using university as an excuse, I selected a rather fine lever arch file, a big pack of biros in a selection of colours (you can never have enough pens, especially when your cats like to amuse themselves by running off with them in their mouths), a shiny new pack of highlighters, and a couple of pads of A4, wide feint, premium quality paper.

The thing about gift vouchers is that you can justify buying things to yourself that you would never buy if you actually had to pay real money for them. Which is why I gave into temptation in Smith's, and "bought" the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Hey, it was half price.  I had found memories of the copy I had when I was about 10, and wanted to recreate that wonder now. But I didn't. Other than a diverting section on animals, it was full of nonsense. Why would anyone pull a car with hooks attached to their lower eyelids, much less publish a huge photo of the feat in all its technicolour glory?!

I'm squeamish. I'm going to take a long time to recover from that.

Was the GBWR always this shoddy? There wasn't even a section on all-time records! Am I just remembering the 1992 edition too fondly? *sigh* I'm afraid I can't put it better than Boyfriend did when he paused after reading about another utterly pointless feat: "I miss Roy Castle". Yes, don't we all?

Lack of sleep, and Doris Lessing

Can there be anything more frustrating than the inability to sleep when you're really, really, tired?

That was me last night. I had had an exhausting day: up at 6.30am reading for university; into work by 7.45am; worked through lunch; left at 3pm to get train to London and college; into the library at 5pm; lectures from 6pm till 9pm; 21:48 train back to Oxford; sorting out notes and various photocopied pieces of reading, before finally falling into bed just after 11pm, clutching the latest edition of The Reader for comfort and a little pre-sleep reading.

Then, when I put the mag down, I couldn't sleep. I considered taking a "herbal brand of sleep aids" but then thought that I would probably be so stunned by sleep that I would never be able to get up today. So I lay there. I switched the radio on and listened to the 1am Shipping Forecast. I switched the radio off. I tried to bore myself to sleep by attempting to name every contestant that has ever been on The X Factor (my ability to remember pointless people from pointless reality shows is legendary).

This must have worked because the next thing I knew I was waking up again. Except I was waking up at 4.45am, and then I couldn't get back to sleep, and I have been awake ever since. This does not please me.

Anyway, enough moaning. For Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize for Literature! Hurrah for her!

I confess I have never read anything by her, though once I nearly did. One of her books was on the first year reading list when I was at Glasgow, but just after the start of term the particular edition went out of print and it was knocked off the reading list. So I never got to read it. Also, once I found myself sitting close to her in the green room at the Oxford Literary Festival, and was struck by how physically tiny she is, but also by how much intelligence she just oozed with everything she said to her companion.

She is only the 11th woman to have won the prize, and I think the first British woman (though she was born in Persia, and raised in Rhodesia - as they were then - she has been in the UK for many decades). She is quoted in the papers today as saying:

"It is good to be the 11th woman on the list, I'm only sorry that one of the first or fourth or the fifth wasn't Virginia Woolf."

She has written many books over her long career, but she was singled out yesterday for her 1962"postmodern feminist masterpiece" (according to The Guardian) The Golden Notebook, which my instinct tells me to immediately go out and buy and devour, but my purse and my time constraints tell me to wait for till after Christmas.

(Though if anyone's wondering what to get me for Christmas... wink... )

Winter, my first lecture, poetry

This morning was the first really crisp, cold morning this side of summer. I could see my breath, and had to run back into the house for my uber-warm cardigan. This pleases me no end. I like being able to put the fire on in the living room because it makes everything feel all cosy, and the cats like to prostrate themselves in front of it. Lovely.

But, enough of my whimsical muttering...

It seems apt, given that yesterday was National Poetry Day, that I have a sheaf of Tennyson poems to read for next week's lecture.

My First Lecture was fantastic, and actually less a lecture than a group conversation about the Victorians, who they were, and more importantly who they weren't. I left just incredibly excited by all the topics that had come up. I am going to love this course, even more than I had imagined.

Speaking of poetry, as I was a minute ago, I am in the grip of a small obsession with Carol Ann Duffy. Having completely loved her book The World's Wife, in which she writes each poem from the perspective of the "wife" of a famous or mythical figure. For example, there is one called Mrs Darwin, one from the Devil's wife's point of view, etc. It's really fantastic. So, while in London a couple of weeks ago, I ducked into Foyle's on the South Bank. Well, it seemed rude not to. In there I found myself drawn to the poetry section, and picked up a copy of Duffy's book Feminine Gospels, the follow up to The World's Wife. I shall let the blurb do the talking:

"In Feminine Gospels, Duffy draws on women's experience - both personal and historical - in poems which celebrate, elegise and eroticise the female condition. With themes of beauty, identity and the body, the book tells tall stories as though they were the gospel truth, and presents new myths as strange and powerful as the old."

Which really is a perfect way of describing it. I just wish that copyright laws would let me post whole poems here. :(

Bak 2 Skool, or Why are student cards so awful?

Today I am going back to school. At last, after months of waiting and reading, tonight is my first lecture for my MA in Victorian Studies. I feel like I have been waiting forever.

I am such a geek, I'm so terribly excited.

And I am a student again! I can get student discount again, thanks to my shiny new student card. Ah yes, my student card...

... How is it possible that all photos on students cards are so completely bloody horrific? This is my third time around the old studenty block, and not a single one of my student cards have had an in any way approaching half-decent likeness of yours truly.

Exhibit A: Glasgow University, 1999-2003
I spent four years at Glasgow studying English Lit. Four years with a truly awful picture on my matric card. The day of matriculation was tipping it down, and I'd had to queue for a bloody age outside for something or other. At the time I was still in my terribly embarrassing goth phase and my long hair was dyed bright post box red at the front. My hair was soaked by the time I sat down in front of the camera, and I automatically tucked one side behind my ear, as was my habit.

Sadly, when the card came out, the background was also quite dark. This meant that  on one side of my head it looked like I had very short hair, while the other side was just this long flank of scarlet hair.

I looked like whathisname from the Human League.

Exhibit B: Stirling University, 2004-2005
A year's postgrad degree in Publishing Studies. One very rushed morning on the way into the bookshop I worked in full time for a year between degrees. I was about to go to New York, and had at the last minute realised that my passport had expired, so desperately needed to get new photos taken if I was to get it renewed in time. I had also that morning received a request from Stirling for a passport photo to go onto my soon-to-be student card. So, I killed two birds with one stone, and quickly got some photos done and sent them off to the relevant places.

I saw my passport photo first. Oh sweet mother of all things holy. Terrible picture. I mean really bad. WAY beyond the normal realms of the slightly dodgy passport photo. Then, a couple of months later, I got my new card from uni. The bleaching effect that had happened when they transferred the photo to computer, then onto card made me look not unlike a bloated corpse, newly dragged from a river.

At least I only had a year of that card. I have another 7 years on my passport...

Exhibit C: University of London, 2007-2009
So now I am starting a part time, 2 year MA. I had high hopes for this time round the matric card block. I'm a "young professional" now. Surely that means I take a much better photo?

Er, no. I looked dazed, confused, and not a little homeless. Still, at least I look alive in this one.

**An Update (unrelated to the above)**

My latest OUP Blog is up now.

Normal Service is resuming...

Right, hello, normal service is resuming as from today. Promise.

The in-laws elect are still here and enjoying their visit to the sunny climes of Oxford. Yesterday we did all the touristy things like the Bodleian Library. This should be my last visit as a mere visitor as I am eligable for a card to study there thanks to working for OUP. This will be infinitely useful come the start of the MA (ONE WEEK TODAY! WOO!).

Went to see the live tour of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue at the New Theatre last night. It was a true Greatest Hits performance with all time faves Mornington Crescent, One Song to the Tune of Another, Swanney Kazoo, Sound Charades, and the Uxbridge English Dictionary. We even got our own kazoo. It's now sitting on my desk to play in times of stress. As yet, I am unsure what my office colleagues will make of it, but I'm going to give it a bash anyway. They seem unperturbed by the small wind up robot that I occasionally set adrift on my desk when the muse is lacking.

Am still tantilisingly close to the end of Darkmans, though sight-seeing and Trivial Pursuit marathons have put paid to any reading time in the last couple of days. By the end of the week, promise.

And you wait all your life for a book group to come along then two pop up at once. I'll be devouring The Easter Parade by Richard Yates for The Palimp, and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox for the book group recently set up by some friends and I. It is happening through the medium of Facebook since we are scattered to the four winds. Or rather, one of us has relocated from the Ox to Edinburgh. (It's all *your* fault Claire! I know you're reading this!)

Anyhoo, I am surrounded by paper and feel a small tune on the kazoo coming on. Leave me to it, and take a gander at my latest OUP blog outpouring, which has given me a small chance to wax lyrical about my love for all things Radio 4.

Inventing the Victorians

I finished Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet last night. I've read it before, in about 2003, but I was returning to it on the instruction of the fabled MA reading list.

This is no dry academic text though. Written by a journalist (and you can tell) it is a break neck tour through everything we think we know about the Victorians but have basically got completely and utterly wrong.

Aside from the previously mentioned lion in a wheelbarrow on a tight-rope (they weren't so hot on animal welfare), they were also responsible for the tabloid newspaper, sex contact ads, junk "email" (by way of the unsolicited telegraph), and were completely obsessed with violent murders and freak shows. Gay and bisexual pornography abounded, and this was the period that coined the phrase "top shelf".

It also explained the derivation of the phrase "Sweet FA". Fanny Adams was an 8 year old girl who was brutally murdered and dismembered near her home. The case was all over the newspapers, and photographs of her grave were sold for people to have framed in their homes as a reminder of good behaviour. Around the same time, the navy was getting a new type of ration: diced mutton in a can. So, in the grand tradition of distasteful armed forces humour, they started calling it "sweet FA" colloquially. Nice.

The book also talks about much pleasanter things: home decoration; the Victorian attitudes to women and children; the development of the cinema. Really very interesting and well written.

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Latest OUP blog post - on blasphemy and Monty Python - over here.

A Wheelbarrow... with a LION in it

I confess that I don't have an enormous amount to report.

Progress continues apace with Darkmans. As DGR said before me, it's the kind of book where even if you can't get a complete handle on what is happening, it still compels you to read on. It is strange, but quite wonderfully written, and a quarter of the way through I am already keeping my beady eye out for Nicola Barker's other books.

I have also been re-reading Inventing the Victorians for university (just over two weeks to go!). Very, very readable book. I am often asked by various bemused family members why I've got such a thing about the Victorian period, and this book provides some wonderful anecdotes to tell in response. For example, not in this ultra health-and-safety conscious day and age would you find a man such as Blondin. He strung a two inch thick rope between two points high up in the Crystal Palace before tight-rope walking across it sans safety net. Impressive enough one might say, but for the return crossing he came out pushing a wheelbarrow with a lion in it. What a stroke of *genius*! "What can I do to up the old tight-rope ante?... I KNOW! Push a wheelbarrow across... with a LION in it!" Wonderful. Eat your heart out David Blaine, Git Wizard.

In other news, I went to see Jeremy Hardy doing his stand up on Saturday night. Very funny, not least his rant on Channel 4, on cyclists, and his reference to Margaret Thatcher as "the people's Pinochet". And you wait forever for a Jeremy Hardy, then two come along at once. Next week Boyfriend and I are off to see the Oxford leg of the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue tour, featuring none other than Mr Hardy. Am champing at the bit for a rousing rendition of 'One Song to the Tune of Another'.

Wells Hell

Made myself sit down and finish The Time Machine last night, though it was a real struggle. Thank God it was only 91 pages long, otherwise I might have thrown myself out the window. It was a book for my MA reading list (less than two months to go) so I had to read it, and I should think myself lucky that I didn't feel this way about Bleak House. Forcing yourself through nearly 1,000 pages would be insufferable - forcing my way through nearly 100 was bad enough.

I always feel guilty when I don't enjoy "classics". I feel like I must be missing something, that I must be woefully inadequate in some way. In my defence, I can see why it was on my reading list. I think I know the passages we'll be asked to think about. I can see why it was important in the grand scheme of things.

But I just didn't enjoy it very much. Or, in fact, at all.

Not to worry. I've started Dr Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath after reading so many wonderful things about it over at Palimpsest. And I must say that, 30 pages in, I have already fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. The writing is divine and there are just enough clues for you to wonder what is going on without making itself deliberately obscure. What a treat after Wells Hell.

I am bereft...

If I am a little bleary this morning, pray forgive me, for I stayed up to the wee small hours finishing Bleak House.

I am not ashamed to say I shed a few tears when I finished it. The thing about a book that size (989 pages in my edition) is that you can't help investing in the characters - and when those characters are drawn by Charles Dickens, resistance is futile. I have been savouring this door stop of a novel over the past three weeks (reading the odd thing in between), and now it's over I'm not quite sure what to do.

Oh, I know. I'm going to start watching my DVD box set of last year's BBC adaptation all over again.

(Also, I have started on In Search of Adam - only 20 pages in, but looking very interesting already!)