Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope,
looking uncommonly fierce.

Despite saying I was a little conflicted when it came to learning about an author's life because one loves their work, Anthony Trollope is a writer who interests me a great deal at present, so I thought I'd do a little digging around.

Anthony Trollope, born 24th April 1815 (the year of Waterloo) in Bloomsbury, died 6th December 1882 (the same year as Virginia Woolf was born) hated having his photograph taken. "It looks uncommon feirce [sic]," he wrote, "as that of a dog about to bite; but that I fear is the nature of the animal portrayed." He was like many of his contemporaries and the Canon beyond: well-bearded. Such is the Canon. Aside from being astonishingly prolific, he is also credited as having introduced the pillar box to the UK, and was known to dip into the "lost letters" during his time as Post Office inspector for inspiration. He said himself, "I was always in trouble."

As I say, he wrote a lot. Some forty-seven novels, as well as essays, biographies, short stories, and travel guides. Perhaps the most famous series are The Chronicles of Barsetshire: The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small House at Allington (1864), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), and The Palliser novels: Can You Forgive Her? (1864), Phineas Finn (1869), The Eustace Diamonds (1873), Phineas Redux (1874), The Prime Minister (1876), and The Duke's Children (1879). His comic novels include Ayala's Angel, The American Senator, The Belton Estate, Brown, Jones and Robinson, The Three Clerks,  Miss Mackenzie, Dr Wortle's School, An Old Man's Love, Rachel Ray, The Claverings, and The Fixed Period. The Irish Novels (Trollope lived in Ireland between 1841 and 1851) are The Kellys and the O'Kellys, An Eye for an Eye, The Landleaguers, Castle Richmond, and The Macdermots of Ballycoran (his first novel). Overseas Novels (Trollope was well-travelled: aside from touring all of England, he visited Australia, America, Ceylon, and South Africa) include The Golden Lion of Granpere, Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, Nina Balatka, The Bertrams, La Vendee, Linda Tressel, and John Caldigate. Finally, the Dramatic Novels: Sir Harry Hotspur, Orley Farm, The Way We Live Now, Marion Fay, Is He Popenjoy?, Kept in the Dark, Mr Scarborough's Family, Cousin Henry, He Knew He Was Right, Lady Anna, Ralph the Heir, and The Vicar of Bullhampton. (These are as categorised by The Trollope Society. See 'The Victorian Web' for a description of each novel.)

He wasn't praised for this vastness, on the whole. In fact, Trollope seems to divide literary lovers. Julian Hawthorne, despite being his friend, claimed he had "done great harm to English fictitious literature by his novels". Henry James believed that The Belton Estate (a comic novel) was "a stupid book, without a single thought or idea in it". That said, Hawthorne also believed Trollope to be a credit to England and a "darling of mankind", and James later wrote that he was "the most trustworthy, though not one of the most eloquent, of the writers who have helped the heart of man to know itself". On the other hand, Wilkie Collins admired him (and, your fact of the day, they are buried near each other in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. George Eliot admired him also, and although this is quite a vague thing for me to say (I find it quote hard to clarify these things), there is a real sense of Middlemarch in He Knew He Was Right involving the question of who will marry Mr. Gibson. I suppose I shouldn't really say this because I haven't finished either book at this point! Virginia Woolf was also an admirer, particularly of The Barsetshire Novels's main characters Lily Dale. Interestingly, Woolf named one of her own characters in To The Lighthouse Lily, however this may be a coincidence (see Pamela McCorduck).

This division makes me all the more intrigued. Trollope is a part of the Canon, but a rare case where we are not expected to accept this without question. We're not told to love him as we are with the other well-bearded ones. It seems if you dislike him, you're in good company. Perhaps this is why he doesn't feature on the high school syllabus (correct me if I'm wrong, please). As a man, he is very interesting. His childhood seemed difficult: The Victorian Web, for example, describes his father as "The father was gloomy, ill-tempered, and improvident", and goes on to say "his law practice gradually fell away; an expected inheritance was cut off; and the family fortunes sank lower and lower each year." His physical description seems to be as impressive as his list of novels:

Trollope was fresh-coloured, upright, and sturdy. Although not quite six feet in height his broad shoulders, fine head and vigorous power of gesture gave an impression of size beyond his actual inches. Everyone who met him remarked on the extraordinary brilliance of his black eyes, which, behind the strong lenses of his spectacles, shone (as one memorist records) 'with a certain genial fury of inspection'.... His voice was bass and resonant.... His laugh was, at its healthiest, a bellow. For so large a man, he was easy of movement and could sit a horse, if not with elegance at least with monumental certainty. He was a strong walker, a good eater, a connoisseur of wine, and an insatiable disputant.... Extreme short sight was, indeed, his only disability. [Michael Sadleir, quoted by The Victorian Web]

I think perhaps a Trollope biography is in order! I am very interested in exploring Trollope further, and it's exciting, as I've said, this sense of intrigue, that perhaps this is the start of a new love for a new author.

I'll write more when I've finished reading He Knew He Was Right, for now, as surely is very clear, I have love for Anthony Trollope!

There's always one: Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

For me, liking Pickwick Papers was far more of a challenge than simply reading it. I'm not, on the whole, put off my 'chunksters' and wasn't greatly concerned at the 804 page length. Well, not until I got about 100 pages in and realised that this was the most boring book I'd ever read and I still had seven eighths to go.

I had a break from it, and then I read this wonderful post by Edward - Dickens Literary Salon: Pickwick Papers. 

I have to admit that I fell in love with Pickwick from the very start. I wanted to be in the Pickwickian world of this novel. I’ve read comic novels before, that I’ve really enjoyed and laughed throughout. But Pickwick, for me, operated on another level, one of serene joy. If I wasn’t laughing, I was smiling (except, of course, for the Fleet Prison scenes). He does seem like some kind of superior being, like Chesterton’s pagan god wandering the countryside. Pickwick is the flip-side of the other titan comic character of English literature, Falstaff. Where Falstaff generates joy through debauchery and vice, Pickwick brings joy through benevolence and love. I wouldn’t mind meeting up with Falstaff for a night at the tavern, but it’s Pickwick with whom I want to wander the roads.

His enthusiasm inspired me, I wanted to find what he found, love what he loved, read it with pleasure as he had done. This is the kind of review I wanted to write.

But I can't, because I couldn't love it. Not even close. I didn't get it, I didn't find it amusing, I didn't wish I was reading it when I was doing something else. I didn't get that feeling from it the way I do from a book I love, that this is what a "proper" novel ought to be like. I didn't, as I say, get it and I couldn't let that go the way I could with, say, Finnegans Wake. Perhaps this is where I went wrong: looking for something, some kind of thread, anything really to hang on to. But I couldn't find anything. I may have spent too much time looking and not enough time just appreciating what was in front of me. I did try to love it, and I have been guilty in the past of not giving books a chance. I said on Twitter after the first chapter of Les Misérables that I hated it, but then Adam told me to keep going and he had loved it, so I did make more of an effort. Whether the book picked up or I did, I have to say I am loving it now and I'm grateful, either to Hugo or to Adam, I'm not sure which!

Anyway, as I say, there's always one. A writer cannot produce genius work after genius work, and I know a lot of Dickens fans gloss over Pickwick as a vaguely embarrassing "first shot". I should take comfort from that, but I am disappointed, as I was when I read Between The Acts by Virginia Woolf and I thought, "what on earth was that?". It's just one of those things. I'm not put off by it and am still enjoying my challenge (that said, I do want to focus on Trollope for the next few days because I am enjoying it so much - I think this will be the first "5 star" book for my Goodreads!). After that, well, I should pick Bleak House up again, however I'm tempted to say through no fault of Dickens I missed the boat a little with it (more because of my mood than anything) and I'll wait 'til spring before I pick it up again. I am very excited at what I have to choose from. I'm thinking either Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, or The Old Curiosity Shop. It's so nice to still have so many to pick from! I'm not looking forward to reading Barnaby Rudge, so it won't be so nice when that's all I have left to pick from...

The Thrill of the Chase.

Anthony Trollope.

When I first read Virginia Woolf around eight years ago (To The Lighthouse was my introduction) I knew as I was reading it that this was the start of something huge for me. And it was; I went on to get around eighty books by or about her, and you may remember the last two were first editions of Orlando and Flush. Since then I have gone on to love a lot of authors and a lot of books, far too many to name. But I have never since had the feeling as I had that afternoon when I first read To The Lighthouse: excited about authors, of course, wanting to learn more about them, wanting to read more of their work, yes absolutely. But not the anticipation of an outright obsession. Granted, I've never looked for it, actually it never entered my mind that I would feel that thrill again. Until two nights ago.

So much for Vanity Fair. I said I'd read it, I needed to start something new and I was frustrated with my large 'currently-reading' pile, so having finished my post I went to bed with it. And it wasn't that I found it boring as such, I simply wasn't in the mood. I got about three chapters in and got fed up. So, I picked out Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, inspired as I was by Allie's post. Because her post was based on a 'Top Ten Tuesday', I thought of Jillian's recent contribution, her "Top Ten Chunksters" she's looking forward to reading in 2012, so I thought of my own "chunkster" list, and the only one I could remember as I stood in that freezing cold room at two thirty in the morning was He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope. So, I picked that one up as well and ran (yes, ran - it was cold!) back to bed.

I didn't think I would start it. I thought I had decided to go with Portrait of a Lady because Allie has me very intrigued, but that night I wanted something new entirely, and I've already read a little of James. So, I read the back of the other two books, decided I didn't fancy Woman in White and opted for He Knew He Was Right.

I can't even say specifically why I find this book so thrilling. I've never been afraid to rave about books or authors I've enjoyed, but all I can say is that, so far, I really do believe this is the start of something major in my life. I can't pin it down, and I can't find the words to express these feelings other than it's a thrill to read him, a real, genuine, shock of a thrill. And I'm not even that far through. Perhaps it's one of those books that starts really well and gets boring. According to Goodreads I'm only 16% through it: maybe 952 pages is too much, this book could become very boring. These things happen. I might be wrong. But even if I am wrong, this feeling right now that this may be the birth of an absolute obsession not felt since the first reading of Mrs. Woolf is deeply exciting. There is something huge here, I can just feel it. So far, this isn't a five star book, it doesn't even rank, it is beyond brilliant to me. I'm absolutely absorbed, I'm feeling the physical reactions the characters must feel, I am utterly gripped. I've found myself a few times when I have just a few minutes to spare either reading a couple of pages or, if I don't have the book with me, looking up Anthony Trollope on Wikipedia or The Trollope Society. I'm so impatient, excited, and keen. And I really want this to work out. I don't want to post in a few days and say that He Knew He Was Right got boring. I want to be right about this. (And I am desperately trying to refrain from saying, "And I hope when my obsession truly kicks in, I can say I Knew I Was Right"!)

As I say, it could all just fall away and the book could end stupidly, and you could even say that, judging from my mood of the previous post, I was so in need of some kind of kick I would have found it in anywhere. I don't know. But to say I have high hopes is a gross underestimation.

In the next few days, I'll write more about Trollope, and tie it in a little with November Autumn's January Prompt for the Classics Challenge. As for now, I'm going to bed to read some more. I'm nervous, as well: if this book fails me, or (God forbid) I fail this book, it will be a huge disappointment. So please do send good bookish vibes!

New books to read vs. the 'currently-reading pile'.

I always have more than one book on the go, usually three or four, but there are times like these when I don't want to read a single one of them.

It's not that I'm not enjoying them, I am enjoying them (apart from Pickwick Papers, but I'm doing my best with it). But my "currently reading" pile... let's see... I have the aforementioned offender Pickwick, which I've been reading since the beginning of January, War and Peace which has been on the go since December, Les Misérables again since the beginning of January (but it's only about a chapter a week to read, so not a bedtime book), The Bible (on the go since August), Middlemarch, another group-read over a long period so not a bedtime book, and finally Bleak House. Now, as I've read both David Copperfield and Great Expectations this month, I'm very aware of ODing on Dickens. I'm serious. Too much of a good thing, you see. Firstly, I don't want to read nothing but Dickens until I've finished the major works because it becomes a task rather than a pleasure. Right now, I want to read something other than Dickens, so why spoil Bleak House by looking forward to reading, say, Vanity Fair. 

It's got to be said: sometimes I go a little overboard with my 'currently reading' pile, especially when it gets fixated on one author. 

Last night, with this in mind, I decided to start Vanity Fair, however (and this may say something about my mood last night), I noticed near it was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The fact that I read the latter instead kind of gives an indication that I didn't know what I wanted last night (but I did enjoy Loathing, and the illustrations were marvellous!). 

So what now? I had no specific "January" goals, overwhelmed as I was with my 2012 goals! I will stick with the Les Misérable plan because I'm enjoying it now, and The Bible at roughly one chapter a week is hardly tasking. Pickwick, well, it's existence annoys me, so the sooner read the better in my mind, however because the past week has been a little bit difficult to say the least (a fiscal-emotional roller-coaster that has led me to detest the outside world), I'm not in the mood to go to bed tonight and plough through it. Same with War and Peace: I just don't like War and Peace. I didn't like it the first time I read it, and I hoped spending more time with it this time around would make it grow on me. Not, as yet, abandoning the project, but I'm fairly close. 

What do I go to bed with, in short. Well, I have my own ideas and those ideas are Vanity Fair. I just want to focus on one book for a while. Sometimes the "currently-reading" pile becomes a little stale, especially when it isn't attended to regularly. I need something new, something fresh. I haven't even picked it off the shelf, it's still waiting. I don't really know what it's about (I have a vague idea, of course) and I have no idea how it ends or anything. I know a lot of people on here love it, or are loving it as they read it. I've wanted to read it for a while, and there it is, waiting. I have high hopes for it. As with last night, I want to pick a new book from my shelf instead of navigating around various piles and go to bed and relax. As much as I want the sense of accomplishment for finishing War and Peace and Pickwick, or completing another Dickens (and I do believe I will really enjoy Bleak House), I need something new. I've never read any of Thackeray. In fact.... Yes, I have pulled it from my shelf just now. It's on my knee and I'm going to Look At It.

My Gran bought me that. I do think I'll enjoy it. A new book, a new author. A newcomer to the pile. But I need it. I refuse to ruin Bleak House because I've gone a little overboard on Dickens. If I was to finish Pickwick by the end of the month, that's three Dickens at over 700 (or more) pages. I think that's a good month's work, and come February I will pick up Bleak House more gladly, and enjoy it in its own right, not as 'another Dickens'. I need to be refreshed. So, Vanity Fair it is. And, aside from a little Ted Hughes here and there, I'd like to just focus on this. I haven't read 'just one' book in a very long time.

Readathon!

My first readathon of 2012 and I am most definitely in need of it! As you'll have gathered from previous posts, I've not been myself for a few days, but when I woke up this morning with the sun on me and a twelve hour block of reading ahead, I did feel a little better. So, as with previous readathons, I shall update as and when, more frequently on my Twitter, and the updates below will be the most recent first.

And my plans? A Ted Hughes book of poetry, 1 Kings, and Pickwick Papers are my duty reads, however as I want to relax and enjoy today and I find Pickwick far from relaxing and enjoyable, I won't be too hell-bent on that. What I am focused on, and most excited by, is The Chronicles of Narnia, which I will be reading in order of publication.

So, it is 11:55. I am going to grab a hot lemon and honey and settle down! I'll come back in a few hours and see how everyone else is getting on. Have a lovely day, everyone!

17:39 - I'm nearly six hours in and enjoying it very much! Have finished The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which was fantastic, as was Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (best first sentence ever!). Also finished The Silver Chair, which wasn't quite as good, but still worth a read. Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves, I'm off for a quick break to make the tea, hopefully back about seven o'clock.

00:20 - Yes, I do indeed suck at updates! My 12 hours is up, however I said I'd go til 2ish on account that I had two hours off, and... dare I admit... I appear to have fallen asleep at one point! Since the last update I have read The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew, and am about a quarter of the way through The Last Battle. By the end of it, I'd like to have finished that and read a little Ted Hughes. If I also manage to get my third chapter for Les Misérables read that would be awesome!

02:06 - Finished The Last Battle, and so have finished The Chronicles of Narnia! Hurrah! And this maybe a weird reading-leap, but I'm ready for Vanity Fair now: I really disliked one of the characters (Jill), and it got me thinking about anti-heroines. So tomorrow, I shall start it. And I'm signing off now. Will perhaps read for another half an hour until I fall asleep, really not that tired yet, but busy day ahead tomorrow. Night, all!

PS - I read 1617 pages :)

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Here is a book that surely must get more terrifying as the years pass by. It is awful, I hated it, but that is the point. It isn't a nice book. But it's good, which is why I hated it. It is absolutely brilliant, insightful and true. It brings home the ugliness of how our society operates, and the terror of what might be in the future. You can't argue that it's a Swallow vs. Flies situation when it really is happening. I feel like it would take some rather epic optimism to argue that in the future we'll all be Swallows and there aren't really any Flies. The Flies are crawling all over us.

At least that's how I feel at the moment. A little hopeless, which is partly owing to reading this, and partly because of living in a society of Flies. I really just would rather not. But such is life. I need to read some lovely books. I was planning on Discipline and Punish by Foucault, who wrote about the Panopticon. I am, I have to say, writing this from memory, so this may not be as accurate as it ought to be: the panopticon is a circular design for a prison, which allows the guards to observe, but the inmates to be unaware of it at any given time. So, the inmates have to behave all the time: safer to act as though you are being watched, whether you are or not. Like CCTV cameras: they may or not have film in it, and there may or may not be a hidden one wherever you may be. So best behave. Big Brother is watching. 

But, Discipline and Punish isn't a good book for me at this moment, nor was Nineteen Eighty-Four (but that obviously didn't stop me). It is one of those books everyone really ought to read, and frankly if you aren't vaguely considering suicide at the end of it, then Orwell hasn't done his job. It really ought to be read, this book. Perhaps not when you were fed up to start with, though.

I'll end with this, one of the more sickening passages from the book, from the fifth chapter of the first part (pg. 59 - 61 of the Penguin Modern Classic edition):

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and the adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word. A word that contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not.
....
'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point.
...
'By 2050 - earlier, probably, all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.

A bitter end note, I know, but worth remembering Nineteen Eighty-Four has been banned in its time.

Why I prefer 'Swallows and Amazons' to 'Lord of the Flies' (even though I loved 'Lord of the Flies').

There is a really short reason: one is cheerful, one is not, quite simply.

But I did love William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I liked it's darkness, it's pessimistic grimness that makes me wonder why Golding didn't just end it, and why I don't too. There is nothing beautiful: pure, savage, cruelty lurks in every human being, or boy, and is just waiting to leap out at any moment. Anyone can bully and kill with a little push. It is there inside us, this primitive danger simmers within each and every one of us and beware of it.

Apparently, anyway. 

I was talking to my pal about this, and he said it annoyed him, this belief that humans are inherently evil. He had to be a Christian, Golding I mean, didn't he? We haven't yet recovered from The Fall, I bet he would argue. And funnily enough, I didn't consider this until after our conversation. Cynical maybe, but the idea that a perfect society will turn to hell in the end because everyone is basically horrible and needs God, the government, the police, or whatever, isn't exactly revolutionary. I'm not saying people don't question this kind of determinism (like we also saw in The Beach, another favourite of mine), but I don't think we do enough. And this belief that we need all this guidance to keep us from turning on ourselves doesn't appear to do us a great lot of good.

(This is also why I might put down Dickens for the weekend and turn to Nineteen Eighty-Four: I'm in that kind of mood.)

But lo, what is this? It is Arthur Ransome here to bring me out of my "you can't trust anyone" Golding-Orwellian dysphoria. Swallows is another book I waited too long to read, and it is all-round loveliness, from the Lake District setting, the "good sort" children, and the yummy picnics and positive attitude that fills them all. I hope children really were like that in the twenties and thirties, because let's be honest, if Nancy was a 00s kid and Uncle Jim / Captain Flint said, "if that box is there, I'll give you anything you'd like to have", she would be walking away with a PlayStation, not asking for his word that he won't "turn native again".

Ah, but I sound like Golding. It's not so easy to have faith in those strangers who surround you, which I suppose was where Golding was coming from. Swallows contradicts this. Everything turns right in the end, no one has to die, and everyone pulls together. Of course there are authority figures in this, but it's based on kinship. John in the oldest, Roger the youngest, so John is in charge and that is that. But there is no bloody revolution and no one gets their glasses stolen.

I wish life was like that always. I don't want anyone to have their glasses stolen, and Piggy's "ass-mar" ought to have been better taken care of by the others. I feel like our lives, our personal lives on a small scale, is or should be like Swallows, but somehow there's always someone bigger ready to steal your glasses and throw boulders at you, and if you don't watch out the Thought Police (or whatever, as I say I haven't read it yet) will knock you off the cliff and into the sea. On a large scale, life seems more like Flies, but then that's ok if we act like it needs to be. And does it? Are we Swallows or are we Flies? "Death or Glory"?

People, every one, every single person, needs to read Swallows and Amazons and other lovely books (even though I just said I was going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four tonight, which doesn't sound lovely) so the Flies ethos isn't simply accepted. We don't need protecting from each other because we're all lovely and we will play nicely with the Amazons and not crack up like Simon. I think we should have a 'lovely book group read'.

And now, I'm going to have a bath, read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a cathartic exercise, not watch the news, pretend Wikipedia didn't black out yesterday, and turn my phone off so no one else (large scale or small scale) is given an easy way to interfere with my life.

Glitter, Sylvia Plath, and Ted Hughes.

It's wrong to compare Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, but after finishing The Colossus and Ariel today there was one thing that made it irresistible. The use of the word "glitter". "Glitter" is dropped all over Ariel and appears at least once that I noticed in The Colossus. How did I notice? Well, one of my favourite poems comes from Ted Hughes's Crow: 

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
 He decided it glared much too whitely.
 He decided to attack it and defeat it.  

 He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
 He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
 He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.  

He laughed himself to the centre of himself  

And attacked.  

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
 Shadows flattened.  

 But the sun brightened—
 It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.  

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.  

 "Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

[1972, my emphasis]

In The Colossus, Plath writes,

... Time,
Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun
Its endless glitter.
[Poem for a Birthday, 1960]

In Ariel, well, there's glitter all over (the word, at least, anyway). "Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas" (Ariel), "On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering" and "A glitter of wheat and crude earth" (Berck-Plage), "Masturbating a glitter" (Death & Co.), "White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath" (A Birthday Present), "and the bottles of empty glitters" (Wintering), "Glittering / Glittering and digesting" (The Munich Mannequins), and "There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers" (Totem). And it's sadly ironic, because Plath no longer glitters to me. She is praised into making something that is inherently ugly, depression, into something beautiful, but to me, she takes something beautiful (like the word "glitter"!) and makes it ugly. I want "full glitter", the strength, power, and glory, not "glittering and digesting", or the "glitter of cleavers".

You see, Plath didn't write for me. She used to, when I wanted to believe that depression could produce beauty, as though I ought to have been grateful for what I thought was a life sentence of pain. Beauty is produced in spite of depression. That there is the difference. Ariel, The Colossus, is no more for me than Catcher in the Rye was when I read it at the age of 27. The moment has passed. I'm not there anymore (and thank God for that). That's not to devalue her, as I say, she produced this in spite of an illness that killed her. That is remarkable, to give so many of millions of women a voice and something to identify with. But when you don't identify with it, it becomes ugly. Perhaps it's ugly because it's a painful reminder: I think perhaps my interpretation is as flawed as a woman who claims it is genius just because it speaks to her, and because it doesn't speak to me I only give them one star on Goodreads. But is that unreasonable? Her poem Edge for example disgusts me now, when before it summed up my way of life: "The woman is perfected. / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment". I find that frightening, very deeply disturbing.

I think sometimes art isn't for you because it was never supposed to be. Writers appeal to a certain type, often, I suppose, and if you aren't their certain type then you're not going to get it. I'm making excuses, maybe, because I'm disappointed. I used to love these poems. And, like I said I didn't like Shakespeare's works but I was intrigued by him, so too am I intrigued by Sylvia Plath. I do mean, still, to read the diaries I bought a few years back. But I feel bad. This isn't something I wanted to dislike so much.

I feel bad about this post, I really do.

On a positive note, there was one poem I did still particularly like because to me it shows clearly how depression affects one. Here it is, from The Colossus:

The Eye-Mote

Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,
Tails streaming against the green
Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves

Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then I was seeing
A melding of shapes in a hot rain:
Horses warped on the altering green,

Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns,
Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,
Beasts of oasis, a better time.
Abrading my lid, the small grain burns:
Red cinder around which I myself,
Horses, planets and spires revolve.

Neither tears nor the easing flush
Of eyebaths can unseat the speck:
It sticks, and it has stuck a week:
I wear the present itch for flesh,
Blind to what will be and what was.
I dream that I am Oedipus.

What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.

This week's reading.

This week is as busy as last week, however unlike last week I am getting an awful lot of practical, real-life, adult stuff (boring stuff) done. So this is good, however getting time to myself to read has been almost impossible, especially as I'm on a bit of a deadline. But I am still managing to find some time for a few pages here and a chapter there. War and Peace is going ever so slowly, but that's fine. I am really enjoying Les Misérables having, in week one, declared that it was the most boring thing ever written. I'm looking forward to reading the third chapter in the next day or so (which means we're into the third week of the year... Gosh...). I finished David Copperfield last week (and am struggling for an idea for a post: the one thing that I really want to write about would spoil it for people who haven't read it, so I can't do that, but this is not to say I didn't enjoy it: I loved it) and am just starting Bleak House. I am not far in at all, but I must say it has one of the most wonderful descriptions of London that I've come across:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, nd it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elaphantine lizard up Holburn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in the mire. Horses, scarecely better; splashed to their very blinkers.

Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. 

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it slows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex Marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of the great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on the deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. 

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time - as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. 

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog the densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

This is the opening few passages of Bleak House, and I hope it makes you want to join me! I can't help but remember the post, that post: my post where I criticise Charles Dickens's opening sentence for Oliver Twist: the post that is the most popular on this blog by over 900 hits. As I've said a few times this year, I take it all back!

As for other reading... Why, I don't know, but I'd like to start reading Ariel and The Colossus by Sylvia Plath this evening (well, night, it's after 1am now). I think because, like with Virginia Woolf, I know more about her than her poetry, so I'd like to give these a read.

Finally, partly because I've not had much reading time, and partly because I'm so excited with my Dickens Challenge, I'm desperate to start The Old Curiosity Shop and Dombey and Son. At the moment, I just cannot read enough, which is lucky because the readathon is almost upon us!

Well, this is awkward.

I've just finished reading Bill Bryson's Shakespeare and I don't even know  for sure who the man on the left is, or how to spell his name properly (assuming it is a picture of who we think it is!). But that is he, Willm Shaksp, William Shakespe, Wm Shakspe, William Shakespere, Willm Shakespere, YHWH, or as we most commonly know him, William Shakespeare: "Ever a shadow, even in his own biography," Bryson writes.

I was looking at Katherine's January prompt for the Classics Challenge (and as, right now, I'm not re-reading his plays this isn't my response to her challenge, it's a response to Allie's 'Shakespeare Reading Month') and thinking how difficult it would be to answer some of her first questions. What does he look like? Not 100% sure. When was he born? I can tell you when he was baptised (26th April)... He is so fascinating to me because there are so many unanswered 'basic' questions.

Recently, very recently, I've had a bit of a self-imposed block on searching for biographical information on the authors I love or am reading. I'm starting to agree with Winterson and Faulks, for one: it does seem an almost unnecessary distraction. I know that it can enrich your favourite novels, and I still do believe it is human nature to want to know at least something of the human being that produced this great literature. But it is also fraught with danger. It occurred to me I ought to write about Dickens for Katherine's Classic Challenge: I am, as you know, working through his major works and thoroughly enjoying Fig and Thistle's Dickens Month, and if you follow me on Twitter, you'll know just how much I've enjoyed Great Expectations and David Copperfield, perhaps not so much Pickwick Papers, and how I'm just getting started with Bleak House. A few days ago I bought second hand copies of Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Domeby and Sons, and Little Dorrit, and today I bought The Old Curiosity Shop. In fact, there's only one missing: Barnaby Rudge. This, from the lady who hated Dickens not that long ago, I am now reformed and am entirely focused on his novels. This is exciting: this challenge, reading his major works, it is truly thrilling. But, from what I can gather? Mr. Dickens? Not such a nice chap. 

But, it doesn't matter: it doesn't spoil a thing. How? Because I don't know why he wasn't such a nice chap. I've just been told in fairly vague terms. I don't want to know, and I don't see why, at this stage, I have to. So, I am not so much skimming people's 'Charles Dickens: the man' posts as entirely skipping them. I can't even say that when I finish this challenge I'll hunt them out. I just don't want to know.

But with Shakespeare (you see how I'm trying to write about Mr. Bill and I'm getting into Mr. D?): it doesn't matter. I have read his complete works, and largely, I didn't care for them. At best, I liked a few (and will perhaps write in the coming weeks, though keep in mind I have only just finished writing reading his complete works), so if you tell me he kicked puppies, you won't have spoilt him for me. But the fact is, we don't know if he kicked puppies, or much else. William Shakespeare is an enigma. All we really have is his writing, and even then some has been lost, and some people claim he didn't even write it in the first place! How can you not be intrigued? This man, the cornerstone of English Literature, is elusive. I quote again, "Ever a shadow even in his own biography". It is this that drives people to obsession. Even knowing how ridiculous it is, I've found myself having little "Shakespeare" sessions on Twitter, Tumblr, and the WWW just to find some answers, answers that I find reasonable even if it can't be known. The "second best bed": this got me, it really did: Shakespeare in his will wrote, "I give unto my wife my second-best bed..." How do you interpret that? Was it the slap in the face it seems to be, or, as some believe, meaning the marital bed, as the best bed was kept for guests? This: the vast room for interpretation is what is gripping, what must send some Shakespeare scholars insane, and what must have led Charles and Hulda Wallace in the early 20th Century to move from America to London to devote a part of their lives to root through the ten million or so records just to shed a little light (which, as it happens, they did). It is little wonder Shakespeare is the most written about writer. Indeed, he was prolific, but no match to what has been written about him. 

As for Bryson's biography: for me, it is perfect. He is not a Shakespeare scholar, and he is not trying to present his interpretation of the so-called facts, he is simply navigating himself and us through the maze. This is my approach to literature: I am no scholar, and have no degrees, although I do have an A' Level (I got a B). I am simply wandering through it all, reading what I want when inspiration strikes. And I make mistakes, of course. Some books I have read have entirely left my consciousness, if they were ever truly there in the first place. So, for me, reading Bryson was ideal because he was searching as I am searching. I loved it as I loved Notes From A Small Island: it sparkles. I'm looking forward to reading more Bryson.

And, as it happens, I am looking forward also to reading a little more about William Shakespeare. Just because I didn't enjoy most of his plays doesn't mean I have no interest, far from it. It's almost like Finnegans Wake: there is something to it all, and I want to find it.

Be still, my heart...

A readathon! A winter readathon that I can participate in! This one's a 12 hour event hosted by Sarah Says Read next Sunday, the 22nd January. I will, of course, be joining in.

Not 100% what I'll aim for, but I think it will either be either one chunkster, most likely Dickens's Dombey and Son, or perhaps more likely make this a Chronicles of Narnia-athon and go for 

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Prince Caspian
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• The Silver Chair
• The Horse and His Boy
• The Magician's Nephew
• The Last Battle  

I've been wanting to read these for a while now, and this seems like a great opportunity. If, in the event I finish these before the 12 hours is up (I can't see how I could, but you never know) then I'll either finish the unfinished books of the week, or throw in some Ted Hughes for my Ted Hughes Challenge.

On the subject of Narnia: I gather there's some debate in which order these should be read. I'm going for reading them in order of publication, as above, however some opt for chronological order, that is, following the time scale of the books rather than publication, so the order would be

• The Magician's Nephew
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Horse and His Boy
• Prince Caspian
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• The Silver Chair
• The Last Battle

If you have any thoughts on the order you think they should be read in, please do share them with me!

On a final, unrelated note: there's been some issues with the new comment system on Blogger, and some people have been finding it impossible to leave comments either on this blog or other people's. With help from the very lovely Jillian, I think I may have figured it out. Change to the new interface if you haven't already > Go to 'Template' > Click "Edit html" > Click "Proceed" (and if there's an option to download template, do that) > Click "Revert widget templates to default" > Save. Hope that helps anyone who may be having problems.

This week.

I can't believe it's been a week since I last updated! It's been one of those weeks where I've had a lot going on, and yet achieved nothing of note and have more or less nothing to report. I haven't finished any books, I had total writer's block at the beginning of the week when I did have time, in the middle of the week I hurt my finger (I'll spare you the grim details, in short I thought I'd broken it, but it is no longer acting broken, so it must be fine), and now I have an hour or so to spare before we have Big C's daughter coming to stay for the night. I've hated not being able to update, so it's not to do with me losing interest in my blog. Just time.

I did, this week, buy my 690th book: I was most excited to discover a second hand book shop in town, which always appeared to me to sell tat, but I looked inside with Sandy yesterday and their classics selection is absolutely wonderful. I managed to buy some lovely editions of some Dickens books I was missing: hardback, leather bound, and £4 for both volumes of each book. I bought:

• Dombey and Son (vol. 1)
• Dombey and Son (vol. 2)
• Little Dorrit (vol. 1)
• Little Dorrit (vol. 2)
• Martin Chuzzlewit (vol. 1)
• Martin Chuzzlewit (vol. 2)
• Nicholas Nickleby

I also started using my Goodreads account, which so far I'm enjoying (my profile is here), though I haven't had a chance to use it properly and see what my friends on Goodreads are doing. I'll be online hopefully for a decent amount of time tomorrow evening, so that will be my opportunity.

And, while we're on online housekeeping, I'm sorry I've not been able to respond to the comments left for me on various posts. I do like talking to people in comment threads, and I will respond (if I have time after this post I'll make a start!).

I must say, I am looking forward to a bit of quiet time over the weekend. I've been working through David Copperfield, which I do absolutely love still (though I do not absolutely love Dora, far from it). I would normally have finished by now, so I am feeling the negative effects of the 'chunkster reading', that is feeling like I'm dragging along behind everyone. That said, I am enjoying Dickens month and reading through his major works so much, I think this is my favourite project so far. I'm already thinking about which Dickens I'll start next (I'm particularly interested in Dombey and Son having read the back cover, it sounds very much like Hard Times, though I'm also quite excited about Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend. I remain, it has to be said, very unexcited about Pickwick Papers, but there it is. I have so much I want to read at the moment, and I am frustrated at how slowly it's all going.

Finally, this weekend, aside from reading Dickens, my chapter for Les Misérables, and some Ted Hughes, I want to give Jillian's post some proper attention, something which I've been wanting to do all week. She's written about reading the classics, and responding to the idea that this is better left for school or university. As someone who reads almost nothing but classics, this is something I feel I must respond to, and I've given it a great deal of thought since she wrote it. For now, it is a claim I hear a lot, and reading classics seems to be viewed as something you 'ought' to do, therefore not doing it is an act of rebellion. As I say, I have a lot of thoughts on the matter! Needless to say, I am completely and wholeheartedly with Jillian on this matter.

For now, I need to wash some mugs, then I'm going to read until Big C gets back. I hope everyone's had a good week, and I shall catch up with blogs, comments, and posting this weekend :)

Miss Havisham, me, and Dickens.

"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on the left side.
"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the young man.)
"What do I touch?"
"Your heart."
"Broken!"
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it.

I love Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations in the same sort of way that I love Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: within the melodrama, there is truth. Take away the absurdity and the improbability of the situation and there is a complete clarity. Miss Havisham is real. And this is why I love reading classics - the connection of us, me, today, to characters created hundreds of years before us. A two century barrier does not keep us and them apart. It has always been this way. There is comfort in that, this on going theme that has run through the hearts and minds of so many before us, and of course, before Miss Havisham. These thoughts, this 'psychology' was captured on paper with ink and gives us understanding and words to express what we couldn't or wouldn't. You're not alone. As James Baldwin said, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." Miss Havisham is the embodiment of brokenness. No one stopped all the clocks like she did, not even Auden, but who out there didn't at some point want to opt out of life (physically or metaphorically) after a really bad break up?

Her pain turned cold and cruel, she was determined that vengeance was hers and she would repay (to paraphrase Tolstoy) and she wished to wreak havoc on mankind after a man wreaked havoc on her heart. Who has never felt that, not even for a moment?

But, she made it her calling. She turned the orphan, Estella, who she adopted to love (and this is a basic human need, I think, to love as well as to be loved) into her soldier. In the first encounter with her, she whispered to her, "Well? You can break his heart." She was out to destroy the way she had been destroyed. Miss Havisham is real: she is people's thoughts come to life (on page, at least). Her character represents the bitter, anger of a jilted lover that has become so twisted with it. There is no grasp on reality when someone suffers pain so completely. When all there is is pain and humiliation, who hasn't stopped the clocks?

Dickens is a genius for Miss Havisham alone, but I won't stop here! I finished Great Expectations yesterday morning and have begun David Copperfield. Allie wrote something a few days ago on Henry James that has stayed with me:

There is something incredibly comforting about sinking into a novel by an author you are beginning to love. Some aspects of the writing are still new and exciting, but the common themes and threads just suck you as the reader right in to the story.

This is exactly how I feel about Dickens. Whatever inspired me to write this post has long gone. His style, at first, isn't easy, but it becomes comforting. Dickens is Christmas and open coal fires, and he's a part of England as the Queen. It feels like connection with our history and culture, reading his words. I suppose, as Cassandra said, everyone is familiar with Dickens, even if one hasn't read a single word.  And reading through his major works, I feel the way Allie felt about The Portrait of a Lady (which, incidentally, I can't wait to read now!): I didn't know what David Copperfield was about when I started it, and I'm only about a hundred pages in, but it is both thrilling in its newness and soothing in its familiarity to curl up with. And I think this is what ought to be done with Dickens (though perhaps not Pickwick Papers, mark my words though I fill finish that) - curl up with it. This isn't a book to read at your desk for school, you take it to bed, or lie with it on your sofa in front of a fire with a hot mug of coffee and a biscuit. That's not to say it is always easy. I shared a quote on Twitter a few days ago from Great Expectations, a quote I'll live with for the rest of my life: "Her contempt for me was so strong, that is became infectious, and I caught it." It was like Miss Havisham - something I empathised with, though I would really rather not.

It's making me think of Anne Brontë again, as well. I am growing to love Dickens more and more with each chapter, and thoroughly enjoying working through his major works, but I didn't have this opportunity with Anne. A week of reading her two novels and it was all over. I won't have the feeling Allie describes with her. I'm sure I'll re-read Agnes Grey and Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but there is nothing new to sink my teeth into. With Dickens, I have eleven novels to look forward to. Which I am, and how! I just cannot begin to describe how much I love David Copperfield. Dickens makes me feel warm, which makes him the perfect winter read. I feel so lucky to be getting into Dickens and to have so much ahead of me.

Pickwick Papers, post-Christmas blues, and bad weather.

The new study.

Today has been, in a word, wet. We had gone for a drive when it was early enough to expect light, but everything seemed dark. The tree trunks were black, the grass and leaves were the darkest green I've seen, and the moorland was bleak: everything looked soaked, absolutely sodden with the rain and sleet we had today and last night, that had also caused the power to fail. The sky was heavy, grey, and full. People's roof tiles looked like mirrors. I was hating the book I was reading (Pickwick Papers most definitely needs to be read a section at a time, and is not a bedtime book), and the only cheer was the Christmas trees and lights still up in people's windows, and even those will be taken down by Thursday.

Except my fairy lights. My fairy lights stay up around my bookcase all the year around. I had call to move the study into another room (pictured above), and this space is much smaller, which is a lot better: I like small spaces. I'm so happy with it, but the time it took to move each bookcase took up a lot of reading time, and consequently I felt bad. I felt behind. 

It's funny, how finding a book dull can put me in these moods. This is Anna Karenina syndrome. Getting two hundred or so pages into Pickwick Papers took a lot of time, and whilst War and Peace is well underway, I feel like nothing is completed. I feel like I haven't done anything of worth. At least not yet: a good book makes all the difference, and having taken the advice of @seekinghappyville and @Fleurinherworld, I put Pickwick down and picked up Great Expectations. It is going so much better: for three days, I've felt bad, like because these three days haven't amounted to a great deal, it is some kind of sign that this year will somehow continue in this vein. But we're only three days in, and I have achieved some things: I've got this room looking lovely (at least I think so!), the writing desk is clear of all junk - all it has on it now is my laptop, a notebook, a pen, a Vogue (maybe that shouldn't be there...) and my Greek dictionary (incidentally, learning the Greek alphabet is not as difficult as I feared!), and, like it or not, I am getting through a book that is worthy of reading.

And I still have my plans and my hopes. I'm not "writing off" these past few days, but I am drawing a line under them and moving forward. If I have my plans, my hopes, and, indeed, my motivation (which is still in check) then I'm all set. Call this the post-Christmas blues, but anyway spring is coming, and we have a few months ahead of comfort. The weather is still inhospitable, I wonder how anything manages to survive, so we stay indoors. Armchairs, tea, coffee, telephone calls, and reading. Winter is cosy, whatever happens outside. The wetness and cold doesn't stop anything. I may well be reading a good many dull books in 2012, but isn't this what reading is all about? Discovery? Sifting through all kinds of everything to find the few books that live with us for the rest of our lives?

In that spirit, I will partake in The Broke and the Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I'm Excited to Read in 2012.

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
2. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope.
3. Pamela by Samuel Richardson.
4. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
5. Collected Poems by Ted Hughes.
6. Persuasion by Jane Austen.
7. Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.
8. Vanity Fair by William Thackery.
9. Germinal by Émile Zola.
10. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

And there are other things, as well. I'm looking forward to re-writing my novel, progressing with Ancient Greek, seeing some progress with exercising (I'm counting distance against time now, I don't look at the calories burned), going away with Big C, buying Lord knows what new books, completing the most boring books in the whole world so I can at least say to myself, "I have read it" (I hope you're listening, Pickwick), watching Effy get even stronger, seeing the owls, joining in with some readathons (I am so ready for a readathon, if you know of any, please do tell me!), getting into yoga again... All the things I've listed, which I've re-read just now. I am excited again, despite a few off days. In the next hour, I'll be headed to bed (not with a cup of coffee!) and continuing with Great Expectations. I have no plans for tomorrow, so it doesn't matter how late I go to sleep. I'm one hour into the 4th January, and I have the whole night, no, the whole year ahead of me right at this moment!

“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.” (Victor Hugo)

Here I sit, gold glitter smeared down my face from cheap, but still lovely eyeliner, another cup of coffee, a plate with croissant crumbs next to me, and a whole study filled with unread books (perhaps not 'filled', but there are a lot of unknowns in this room). I have my Learning Ancient Greek by Peter Jones and Pocket Oxford Classical Greek on my desk, my camera right next to me, my notebook with about twenty pages left clean from 2011, a glass of water, a warm, woolly cardigan on, and the winter sun shining surprisingly brightly. All I can hear is the buzz of the heater and the birds singing outside. I've read my two chapters of War and Peace, started Pickwick Papers, and finished The Sense of an Ending before midnight, and Season Songs after midnight. And I'm loving Pickwick Papers, even if I am only two chapters in, and War and Peace is going much better the second time around.

So much potential, and so much awareness of it right now at this moment. I'm calm, lying back in this chair, but I'm at the same time thrilled by it all. There is so much to do, and three hundred and sixty five whole days, and more, many more days ahead, Fate willing. It's a good day, the 1st day of January. I'm smiling, even though I'm alone in the room!

In the next fifteen minutes, I'll be getting ready to go down to my mam's, and I am going to seriously de-tat Effy. I think later today would be a good time to show you her progress: I'd love to do an Effy post, and it's overdue. She's done so well this year. She's old, of course, but she's now a normal, healthy-for-her-age, tabby house cat. Aside from her missing tail, you would never know the horrors she's experienced, and I hope that she's forgotten it all. I'm told right now she has her head in a carton of crème fraîche, so it seems likely! I'm also going to buy Vogue today: I've not read a Vogue in ages.

And then, tonight and tomorrow, as I've said, I'll be joining in with Allie's readathon, which is a marvellous way to start the new year! Still no plans, other than to make some headway with Pickwick. I may read Crow by Ted Hughes, as well, and the first book of Middlemarch, but I'm undecided. I want to finish all the challenges I've signed up to, but at the same time I'm not completely challenge-orientated. I find when I read one book, it sparks the memory of another book and inspires me to go and read that, so I don't want to deny myself that pleasure. But I'm still hopeful: I still think I can complete my challenges and have a lot of fun!

For now, I need to get dressed.... Once again, Happy New Year, everyone!