P-C if you get Middlemarch make sure to get an edition with footnotes Eliot has lots of references to events and people contemporary to the time so it makes it much more enjoyable when you know what people are refering to.

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Will do, thanks!

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I tried Trollope, but I just couldn't bear how *serious* they all were about their social standings etc. However, I quite enjoy Jane Austin. I've been tempted to read Wilkie Collins, but I'm afraid of running into the "We're British, we're here to help you poor benighted savages achieve your place in civilization as our servants, you lucky creatures" thing. I understand that that was the prevailing world view, but it makes me throw books across the room.

I'm more the "ordinary person facing extraordinary situations" type rather than the comedy of manners type.

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Connie, you could try Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, which is an early mystery/suspense thriller, with no White Man's Burden to be seen.

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you could try Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, which is an early mystery/suspense thriller

And a classic of its kind, I've heard. I wonder if Gutenberg Project has it.

edit: Didn't he write The Moonstone as well?

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Yeah. I've only read The Woman in White, which is very sort of Gothic meets Sherlock Holmes (although this was before Sherlock) meets a little Dickens.

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Quite a bit of Wilkie Collins is on Gutenberg. I've nabbed Woman in White, and if it seems like a good read I'll see if I can find it in print at the library. Some things just need to be more comfortably curl-up-able than a Palm Pilot. Plus I have to hit the scroll button too often for comfortable reading.

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I've been tempted to read Wilkie Collins, but I'm afraid of running into the "We're British, we're here to help you poor benighted savages achieve your place in civilization as our servants, you lucky creatures" thing.

There's a bit of ooo-spooky-heathens in The Moonstone, since it's about a stolen Indian gem. But not paternalism, I don't think.

The Woman In White doesn't have any of that, but it might be harder to take because for a contemporary reader, a couple of the plot twists are obvious several miles off. But it has a fantastic villain which totally makes up for that.

You do have to bear in mind that they were published as serials and there are plenty of (un)lucky coincidences. And that a large portion of The Moonstone was written while Collins was addicted to opium. I liked The Moonstone more, because I think the characters are more entertaining on reread, but they're both good fun.

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Plus, The Woman in White was made into an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, so you can visualize Michael Crawford in a fat suit, playing the villain. Isn't that a bonus?!?

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...Why.... why would you say such a thing?

While napping I had on an MST3K episode where Joel's invention is the "Andrew Lloyd Webber grill." You cook things on his burning scripts.

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