I have just finished The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. What a stupid, selfish moron. Blithering idiot! Now I must do a comparison on the two Lebrun brothers and pretend to be very interested or at least intelligent--both of which will be an interesting process to watch, as I realized that my attention was diverted last night to watching movie trailers for an hour and found them utterly more interesting than Edna Pontellier's lack of introspection. One feels that the narrator was also a callous person, to have abstained from the simple act of telling her character what she was doing to herself and everyone!

I've also just been given the gift of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a marvelous book my mother read to us when we were younger. I'm excessively fond of romantic ideals and therefore am distracted by them especially when presented in print with such a lovely feel of paper and words between my hands.

Christmas is coming soon, and I'm having a good deal of trouble not listening to Christmas music and not reading Christmas books. One of the ways I've been avoiding Christmas music is to just listen to the ones about winter, not about snow and read the bits of books about Christmas that aren't really centered on Christmas. Very satisfying to a conscience like mine.

That's several books down on my to-read list, now--The Secret Life of Bees is up next.