good to know Kat, maybe I'll just return it and not finish it. I assume that doing that with "non-smart" books is ok.

I'd like to re-read A Tale of Two Cities someday. I remember liking it better than anything we read in AP English other than Shakespeare, but I read it while I was recovering from chicken pox, which apparently fried enough of my brain cells that I can no longer remember why I liked it.

ita is me. Also, kind of missed the Faulkner and Hemingway meetings, apart from some short stories(Which it occurs to me, is one subset of fiction where I've spent a lot of time, trying to learn to write them and stuff.)

When I'm reading Great Expectations, I'm always surprised by how funny and lively it is

Yes! There are some really amusing bits.

I enjoyed Tale of Two Cities, but reading Great Expectations was like being poked repeatedly with an annoying sharp stick.

Also, kind of missed the Faulkner and Hemingway meetings

Heh. Their writing styles are so diametrically opposed -- Faulkner's page-long sentences vs. Hemingway's 3-word sentences -- that maybe if you put them in a blender, you'd get something you liked. Faulkingway. Hemingner.

I love Hemingway, and it's because of his terse sentences, and his descriptions that seem all surface at first but then aren't surface-y at all. (Plus all the booze.)

When I was 14, I found the ending very annoying, because it did not seem to resolve a single thing about the Pip/Snot-nosed Girl interaction.

Oh! Nutty, have you read the original ending? My copy has it. If you want me to look it up when I get home, remind me later, but if I recall correctly, it's a more bittersweet. Like, Estella's leaving in a carriage, and Pip goes and talks to her, and they kind of accept that there's something there but nothing will come of it, and then she leaves. Or something.

Also, kind of missed the Faulkner and Hemingway meetings

I'd just like to repeat, for Steph's benefit, that Quentin Compson is my homeboy.

I'd like to re-read A Tale of Two Cities someday

Oh! It's so much fun! (If you don't hate Dickens in the first place.) There are all these hilarious bits, like stout Miss Pross and her loyalty to the heroine. I liked Miss Pross a lot. It's one of those books that I took with me to a foreign country, and read over and over, because I kept discovering new things about it. One time, you can read it as a romantic adventure; another, as a melodrama about loneliness and belonging; a third time, as a treatise about the personal and the political...

Actually it was Two Cities that reminded me that Dickens did have a way with dramatic description -- the crowd in St. Denis, slurping up the spilled wine; the mob at the end, chasing after anyone they can tear apart; silent, malevolent Mme. Debarge and her ominous knitting. Sometimes Dickens makes me roll my eyes with his Oh-so-convenient plotting, but his description can absolutely sing.

Mme. Debarge

Is she like a wacky cross between Mme. Defarge and El Debarge?

Oh! Nutty, have you read the original ending? My copy has it. If you want me to look it up when I get home, remind me later, but if I recall correctly, it's a more bittersweet. Like, Estella's leaving in a carriage, and Pip goes and talks to her, and they kind of accept that there's something there but nothing will come of it, and then she leaves. Or something.

When I read it in high school, we had books that included both endings. Plus the one where Ilsa gets on the plane with Rick.

I'd just like to repeat, for Steph's benefit, that Quentin Compson is my homeboy.

You're an odd spectral bovine, to be sure, but a very interesting one.