When I get into a book and read it daily, I love watching the bookmark I am using make its way from the front of the book to the back as I make progress. I am in the middle (or beyond) of several books at the moment. Sometimes it is hard to decide which one to pick up and read, as I want to finish them all soon. I am mainly working hard on finishing Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I haven't read the introduction yet, but I wonder if this was serialized when it was first published? Or perhaps it was published originally as two books? There is such a feeling of finality between the first and second parts. I finished the first part and am now into the second--reading about the first March sister's wedding! They are older now and I am at a point where I don't want to put the book down. Why did I never read this book as a child? I will definitely be giving it to my niece when she is a little older!
If I weren't so absorbed in Little Women, I would be reading Henry James's Turn of the Screw. I am very curious about this novella. I have read a tiny bit of criticism about it (not too much as I don't want the surprise ruined), so I have in my head what some of the discussion of it has entailed. Did the governess really see ghosts? Or is it just hysteria? I am not sure what I think so far, though I am only about halfway through. What did the governess really see? Flora, her charge, seems oblivious to any "apparitions". I hate to leave this story hanging, so I imagine I will sneak in a few pages here and there to keep my curiosity at bay.
I haven't been spending as much time with the Buzbee book as I would like (and have less than 100 pages to read even), but it is an easy book to pick up and read a few pages here and there and set down again (and not lose the thread of the story). It is a short book and easy reading, so I am just enjoying it as a leisurely sort of read. I also picked up The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland yesterday, which I hadn't opened in ages. I am past the halfway mark on this one, too, with about 200 pages left to read. I hate to admit that I have sort of lost interest in Emily Carr at the moment. Not to say that the book isn't good, but it is sort of going slowly for me. I had hoped to be able to finish it soon so that I could move on to one of the books that I have really been itching to read...either something by Daphne Du Maurier (most definitely!), the first of the Horatio Hornblower novels or something Arthurian. I hate to send it to the unfinished book pile when I am past the halfway mark! Maybe if I can read ten pages a day or so it will pick up again and I can zip through the rest of it.
I decided I would start The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox (seeing as I have not very much time, and this was the library book that sounded most interesting), so I read a few pages, but am not sure what I think. The New York Times gave it a very tepid (at best) review, but nearly all Amazon readers gave it four or five stars. From the very first line of the book you know the narrator has committed murder. What is unsettling is that he is so obviously lackadaisical about it. I am not sure how I feel about reading the story from his perspective. It could either be really interesting or really creepy. Of course the big draw for me is that it is a Victorian pastiche, so I will probably keep going and see what happens! And now the most recent New Yorker has an article about Marie Antoinette that I want to read, and it looks like it refers to the Antonia Fraser biography that I also have sitting next to my bed. Ack--does everyone else feel all these sorts of temptations? But first, I need to concentrate on actually finishing something!