Cutting page intake

The last two books I've read have been 700 and 900 pages respectively, and though I do like devouring books, these have been awfully big meals. I look forward to some less sprawling novels in the near future; next up is Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert. And we just got Lisey's Story by Stephen King from the library. Stuart is currently in the midst of it, but he says that I'm going to love it when my time comes.

But I am so glad I read Middlemarch. My monthly classics plan is doing wonders to close up some holes in my reading, and each book I've read so far, I would pity having missed forever. The book was extraordinary, and it's been said before, but all I wish to say is that I agree. The scene that to me demonstrated Eliot's force as a writer and character creator was when Dorothea calls on Lydgate, and meets Rosamond for the first time. This was a fair way into the book, and by this point I knew both these women intimately. And I could not fathom that they could be ignorant of one another, because they were each so vivid to me. Besides, how could anyone not know Miss Brooke? Each of Eliot's characters were so persuasively people.

And then the Richard Dawkins vs. Peter Kay affair. Who could beat up whom? We're Peter Kay fans at our house, and Stuart went off Dawkins with The Ancestors Tale, and so we're betting on the boy from Bolton.