Reading List

It was a good Christmas for books, thank you friends and family.

I have already rampaged through P.D.James's murder mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley. Despite steering clear in general of 'sequels' and other related imaginings as not possibly anything other than second-rate cash-ins that toy unforgivingly and insensitively with the themes of the original, I risked this one - I think due to the genre shift, it seemed safer that my impression and interpretation of the original would remain intact. Brilliant read, although I could have managed without the didactic digression on the history of the jury system and judicial appeals...

The Vintage re-release of Westwood is also a thing of beauty and a joy forever: a lovely matt paperback with lustrous thick cream pages and a evocative front cover. With Stella Gibbons's best known novel Cold Comfort Farm being one of my standard rainy day / 'mean reds' books, I naturally expected similar scouring literary satire and witty, quotable lines. Not so. This is maturer, sadder - as cynical, yet bittersweet and melancholy. Perhaps because it is a later-life novel, perhaps influenced by the impact of the Second World War. Beautiful reflection on infatuation, love and the intersection of seemingly unconnected lives.

Guardian Style has already been dipped into post-prandially over quite a few dinner tables. Finally, I know how to spell Gandhi (never Ghandi) and what the singular form of referendum is.

I am plunged into Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen right now. I love her. Claire Tomalin, I mean, although, of course, also Miss Austen. Her biography of Nellie Tiernan (The Invisible Woman) was, for me, the first to open my eyes to alternative insights to the myth of Dickens, National Treasure. Already, the Austen novels' emphasis on money, class and power is becoming beautifully contextualised and Jane's only just been born.

Back to the sofa, I think, to pick up where I left off...

Writing, writing, writing

First term of the Victorian Studies MA is over: I spent Christmas writing, writing, writing, and the essays were submitted, heart in mouth, the day before the deadline.

For the 'Progress and Anxiety' module, I wrote on Dickens' Bleak House – I looked at the highly ambivalent representation of domestic and household spaces, focusing on the way that the novel abounds with dirt, disorder and disoriented domestic life. I argued that Dickens sets up a moral spectrum of 'approved' and 'disapproved' household systems and domestic topographies, and that it is difficult to establish if this should be read as a radical or conservative moral project. I was so happy writing it!

For the 'Faith and Doubt' module, I wrote on Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti – I compared the way the two poets explore the efficacy of the poetic voice in approaching an understanding of the divine, arguing that, despite their different poetic styles and belief systems, a shared approach can been seen, even down to shared metaphorical and lexical registers, and both sensing that language is limited and inadequate when it comes to faith. This one was more problematic for me: I will have to think very, very carefully when choosing my dissertation topic, to make sure I have enthusiasm enough to carry me through the required 15,000 words!

This term, 'Race and the Victorians' and 'Fin de Siècle'...

I feel a bit sad that it's one third over already as I am thoroughly enjoying myself – but no time for brooding, there's so much more to do!

Feet of clay

Reading Claire Tomalin's biography of Ellen Ternan - the young actress for whom Dickens abandoned his wife - I discover the extent to which my literary hero had feet of clay.

Dickens' passionate social documentation, live-loving humour, celebration of human nature in all it's diversity, fierce commentary on justice, poor reform, institutions and the Establishment- all this remains unchanged but I am seeing his heroines with a new eye.

Revelations of Dickens' Byzantine deceit, sexual double standards and double-dealings, hypocrisy and of utterly indefensible cruelty to his poor wife. His relationship with Ternan casts his insipid, passive, blandly pretty child-wives and doll-like victims in a whole new (disturbing) light for me.

Following it up with a viewing of the 2007 ITV take on The Old Curiosity Shop - the heroine of which, Little Nell, is the ultimate in pliable pedestal women - you can see Dickens has trouble representing flawed, real womenkind on the page. From Dora to Estella, is that it?

Interestly, it isn't (of course) the novels that have altered but my reading - thanks, Barthes! Is it dangerous to read too much secondary material? Does it muddy the instinctive reading or lift the scales from your eyes?

I am currently embarking on the Brenda Maddox biography of George Eliot. Fingers crossed there is nothing here to change the way I see Middlemarch - I am quite happy with my present understanding! So far, so good: lots of burgeoning Radicalism and working as the first female editor in London, editing a high profile quarterly ...

Utterly obsessed

Having almost given up on TV drama in despair at the apparently unstoppable tide of melodramatic banality (there's a tautology for you) and resigned myself to a life of reruns of Scrubs and QI, I am currently utterly obsessed with one particular show, and an American cop show to boot.

I'm talking, of course, about The Wire.

The boy's brother gave him the first season box set, which we cracked open on Sunday and we're scheduled for Episode 5 tonight. Yes, that's an average of two episodes a night, such is the power of The Wire. Totally compelling scriptwriting, powerful performances and narrative pacing to rival Dickens, I am like a junkie searching out the next fix - an apt metaphor given the subject matter.

If you haven't seen it, watch here! Aie?