"The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a nightmare, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves . . . a book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us." --Franz Kafka
"The unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates
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 Bront 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.
Many of my Shelfari friends know me through the Anglophiles Anonymous Group, where my alter ego is:
Dame Margaret Garside DIXON-SMITH, 1st Baronetess (Btss) of Grayson Manor, Frogmere, Co. of Berkshire
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; Glee, 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, Sarah Palin (just shut up already) 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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