Sunday miscellany

Just a few miscellaneous book-related thoughts:

We're two weeks out from the end of the TBR Double Dog Dare, and I can feel the lure of the newest books on my shelves.  Here are some of the most tempting:

• Trollope, An Illustrated Biography, by C.P. Snow
• Miss Cayley's Adventures, Grant Allen - everyone who has read these has loved them
• One Pair of Hands, by Monica Dickens
• The Newcomes, William Makepeace Thackeray  ("At its centre is Thomas Newcome, a retired Colonel in the Indian Army who finds the snobberies and hypocrisies of early Victorian England disconcerting.")
• The Drowning House, Elizabeth Black - a mystery set in Galveston, involving an historic house, linking the present day and the terrible 1900 Storm
• Raw Material, Dorothy Canfield Fisher - a 1923 collection of essays, which the author describes as an "unrelated, unorganized bundle of facts" (the edition I came across still has most of its pages uncut - I need to find a paper knife!)

With a Christmas gift card in hand, I was browsing Barnes & Noble's website when I noticed that they have Angela Thirkell's Wild Strawberries listed, one of the few of her Barsetshire series that I don't own.  It has been reprinted by in a lovely Virago edition, which isn't available in North America yet.  This was the older Moyer & Bell edition, but since I had a gift card, I went ahead and ordered it.  Quite a few of the copies I have are M&B editions, and while I've heard complaints about them, I've never noticed anything but minor printing errors.  But this book is something else, I've never seen anything like it.  The final straw for me came at the end of a chapter, when half the concluding sentence was printed on the next page under the new chapter heading.  I can't in good conscience even give this book to the library sale.  A waste of a good gift card!

Unless I've got a reading twin, I think my blog is one of those listed on Jane & Briar's most recent round of That Book Game, over on Fleur Fisher Reads - which is great fun!

We had a lovely meeting of the Greater Houston JASNA chapter yesterday.  In addition to our usual sumptuous tea, we discussed an article from the JASNA journal Persuasions, called  "George and Georgiana: Symmetries and Antitheses in Pride and Prejudice" (which you can read here if you're interested).   The author describes George Wickham as "this snakiest of snakes," and we spent some times discussing if he is in fact the snakiest of Austen's characters.  I'm torn between Mrs Clay, slithering into the heart of the Elliot family, and Henry Crawford, who wreaks such havoc in Mansfield Park (though Mrs Norris is an equally adept slitherer).  We decided that Austen's novels are crawling with snakes.  Who is your favorite?

Thanks to my new Netflix streaming, I finally got around to watching the recent Sherlock.  I was so happy to hear this week that production is starting on the third series.  In the meantime, I may need someone to stage an intervention and pry the DVDs out of my hands.  I'm also looking forward to re-reading both the Conan Doyle stories and the Mary Russell books.