"A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins."
--Charles Lamb,
Last Essays of Elia, 1833
I read dead people. I "fell in love" with Charles Dickens when I was just six years old, after my parents took me to see the film "Oliver!" I'm happily married with a young son, and teach British literature at a large university. My field of specialization is Victorian literature, with an emphasis on Dickens. My other favorite writers include Thomas Hardy, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, John Irving, Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, Robert Browning, and pretty much anyone who's both British and dead.
Currently reading:The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
In Medias ResCan You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Recently finished:Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Slam by Nick Hornby
Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
War and Peace by Count Leo Tolstoy
Group I co-moderate:
The Victorian Pantheon
Things I like:My husband and our son; my family; my friends; my first cup of coffee in the morning; chocolate, Mexican food, hamburgers, any type of berry (especially blueberries), shrimp, crab, and crawfish; teaching; old movies (especially the
Thin Man series, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Doris Day, and any Alfred Hitchcock); HGTV; England; being a native Texan; cooking (I read recipe books like they were novels), baking, cake decorating, scrapbooking (my other obsession), and needlework; antiques (especially blue and white things and old lace); English gardens; naps; classical music (especially Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini); travel; a roaring fire, a cup of tea, and a good book; Halloween; Christmas; learning; crossword puzzles; "American Idol" (embarrassing but true), "I Love Lucy," and "Sex and the City"; good manners; autumn; laughing
Things I don't like:Fundamentalism; conservative politicians; pretention; reality TV; beets, lima beans, cantaloupe, grapefruit, hard-boiled eggs, and salmon; dogs; gory movies or TV programs; Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez, John Madden, and Martha Stewart; telemarketers; narrow-minded people; willful ignorance; rudeness; traffic; shopping; whining; noise; perpetual victims; rap and country music; football; brutally hot days; self-righteous celebrities; talk radio; chewing gum
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