I wonder which Austen character Lizzy thinks she is?

Charlotte Lucas is my favourite Austen character. She'd be in my top 10 favourite characters of all time list. What i'm saying is, let's be friends.

I always get Elinor in the quizzes but lbr. I'd be Hill, or some other unnamed peasant person who doesn't get to trim any bonnets at all, because she's too busy washing other people's ballgowns or whatever. Well I mean, MAYBE I could be Mrs Clay. If I'm lucky.

Murder Must Advertise is my personal favourite, too. Well, I mean... I feel like Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon are sort of exempt because they are almost different creatures. But MMA is the one I re-read the most. And Nine Tailors is a close second.

I REALLY love Five Red Herrings but it's probably the least exciting of her books, especially to read again. But MAN the plot is so well worked. As are the characters, but I feel like they don't interact as well as her later ones.

I think it's worth noting the anti-semitism in the context of time. Yes, it's awful, and it's sometimes hard to get past, and absolutely should not be excused. But it's also about working with contemporary prejudices and caricatures - she was apparently asked to tone it down for an American version (I think) and was surprised, saying 'but the jews are the only ones who come out of it well!'. I think it's a misguided, hamhanded way of going about that, but maybe it makes it less hurtful in the present. But also, it's there, so be warned.

I also find the classism so shocking. It's like a different world. It's almost MORE shocking for the way Sayers highlights it as being not very good, or emphasising that even the lower classes are worthwile people. Why are we pointing this out?? (And then she also sometimes reinforces it as What Is Right, because life is complicated)

Anyway, to the point. I would agree that the short stories aren't a great starting place. I'd maybe go them after you've read a couple of books. I'd probably agree with raquinsey, although I would read the blurb of a few of the early ones and see which ones take your fancy. All of them are good but I like some better than others, because of subject matter preference.

DO NOT STOP.

I love this so much.

Whenever I hear about (or eat) 'Eton mess' I think about how St George spills 'all those little oo-jahs' on the steps, and how she's left standing still inside this flurry of activity, observing and contemplating.

That book is so rich in little vignettes. They stick in my imagination so vividly, like I'd seen them, or been there. And I love how Busman's Honeymoon started out as a play and you can still see that structure. It's so beautifully staged and presented, which could be a detraction but turns out to be utterly charming.

This is JUST the best thing.

I read Gaudy Night every year or so, and somehow it's always about something different. What a joy of a book.

YES I came here to say just that. Oh my god, it is such a compelling, and strangely sexy scene.

I also love the way, as the book unfolds, Harriet sees Peter through other's eyes. She's become used to him being his self behind a face, and she realises with a shock how the rest of the world sees him as powerful and masculine and desirable. It's both a reminder to consider things she had set aside, and a reminder of how he himself has deliberately set those things aside in order to even the playing field.

And then the way, at the end, he makes it easy for her to say what she wants to say without him winning. MY HEART.

I love this. I have such a weird relationship with Britney Spears - well, her persona, anyway. She's two years older than me and when Baby one more time came out I was in Catholic high school, in the process of falling in love with another Catholic high school girl. I experienced her as a peer, AND as a packaged sexual object. As an adult watching that video clip it is so clearly gross. I can see how it was training me to believe that I had to be sexually available to everyone to feel worthwhile. But at the time it was like brain candy - everything I wanted to have and be, in a package that looked almost like everything I already was. It is a completely different artifact looking back, but I just can't shake that feeling that it gave me - that all her songs have ever given me. She knows what she's doing, and I know too, and we both know how little it means.

Eat his heart in the marketplace.

Why, WHY did I read this at 4:45. Now I have to leave work and then my boyfriend is going to look at me and say 'what's wrong?!' and I'm going to have to tell him that I've been crying about things on the internet again.

I'm so sorry. That sounds like a horrible, horrible experience.

I read somewhere, a few months after my dad died, that when people we love die our relationships with them don't die. They're not there on the other end but we still have that relationship with them. Sometimes I love that and sometimes it makes me really mad. How come I have to still take care of this relationship with them? And then I get scared that if I let that relationship go, that is it forever.