Lady Dixie

"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... more »

"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:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

In Medias Res
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Dracula by Bram Stoker

Recently finished:
Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan
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
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson
Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers
The Anglo Files by Sarah Lyall
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Great Tales from English History by Robert Lacey
The Man Who Invented Christmas by Lee Standiford
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

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 « less