Good evening, y'all! It's been warm (up to the mid-70's) and sunny here today. I sat out in it for a few minutes this morning when dh let me off at the front door of the hospital and went to park the car. My procedure went great. Just the colonscopy, not the top end this time. All was well, no polyps or problems. YEA! Must have been all those good thoughts and prayers from my good friends. :) Marci and Jan, I'm so sorry to hear about your falls and owies. Bless your hearts. Let others pamper you until you're feeling better! Suzanne, all your photos this week have been so beautiful. The one of the pending avalanche was amazing. And, after my experience this morning, all I can say about that egg photo is "ouch" for that poor chicken that delivered the really big one! Love your photos always! Dee, thanks for checking in about Dave on FB. Still no word. I guess that things are still the same, so they don't have the heart to post right now. DH and I drove straight to Antonio's Italian restaurant from the hospital! LOL The dr. had advised a bland diet: scrambled eggs, pancakes, oatmeal. I just looked at him and said, "WHAT???" He laughed and told me to just go easy at first and to not eat the peppers in the salad when I got there. I ate about 1/4 of the salad and the shrimp & chicken florentine, then boxed up the leftovers for dinner tonight. It was definitely the thought that counted for that meal. :) I slept great last night and awoke ready to get the show on the road at 9 a.m. I got to the hospital at 10 and was in and out from the procedure at the same time I'd originally been scheduled for it. Home by 1 after lunch. No nap, but I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight. It's great to come here and see Maddie, Donna, and Marci posting, too. It's how it should be! I'll be talking to y'all more this weekend. Time for a bite to eat!

Is this thread being "wrapped up"? I agree that it has been very enlightening, but I have only just finished my third CD book, "Nicholas Nickleby", and I am about one third of the way into "The Old Curiosity Shop". What started with the proposal of this thread and the subsequent discussion looks to stretch indefinitely into my reading future. I want to thank everyone for sparking my interest - and I especially what to thank whoever it was who had the idea of general, individual readings of Dickens rather than concentrating on just one Dickens book. To supplement Ackroyd's Dickens bio, I also read Tomalin's. friedag, you are right that different biographers have different perspectives. Like carolyn_ky mentioned, it is obvious that Tomalin's big interest is "the affair" between CD and Ellen Ternan and thus Tomalin's biography is about half the length of Ackroyd's. Maybe that shows some of the differences between male and female biographers, because Ackroyd recounts the affair rather perfunctorily but includes much more detail of other aspects of CD's life. It could be, too, that Tomalin is more attuned to what interests female readers of biographies: relationships, factual and rumored. friedag, Charles Palliser's "The Quincunx" is said to be a Dickens pastiche. New Zealander Lloyd Jones wrote "Mister Pip" - the setting is Papua New Guinea and could be right up your alley! I have not read either of those, but I did read Gaynor Arnold's "Girl in a Blue Dress" and Richard Flanagan's "Wanting", both of which were inspired by CD's unhappy marriage to Catherine. All I can say about them is they are intriguing takes, but I found them quite maddening (angry-making, that is, not crazy-making).

Lydia, thank you for letting us know. I'm glad you enjoyed your reread of GWTW. It's a helluva a story, in my opinion, in so many respects. My apologies for not responding to your post just previous to the last one. I didn't finish Bridget Jones's Diary. I couldn't stand her whinging -- what was it, ten years ago? -- so I doubt I would tolerate her any better now. I have no idea if future readers will think she's "so 1990s/2000s", or whatever dismissive phrase they invent. But I think you're right in noting the similarities between Bridget and her ilk and the snarkiness of the characters in Georgy Girl. Whatever is trendy in a contemporary novel is bound to be old hat to successive generations of readers -- even when they like vintage styles. Something you, or someone, said above (or elsethread) struck me: (paraphrasing, since I can't locate it to quote directly) readers like historical novels written in their own times better than preceding generations' contemporary novels because the sensibilities have been redone to suit what the writers and readers want those times and the characters to have been.The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that's right. Let me guess about Summer of '42: Are the readers nowadays hostile about the young boy losing his virginity to the older woman? I can see how that would be a 'modern' take. It sure didn't seem to be awful to Raucher's character in 1942...Hermie, I think was his name. And I don't think it was considered obscene back in the early 1970s when the book came out, but we have become sensitized to the 'issue' of cougars since. (Even the term cougar is ugh-worthy!)

liz/lemonhead it is only available on netflix here (apparently the BBC couldn't afford to make/buy it) so haven't seen it. The few write-ups I have seen have been surprisingly favourable. I suppose it might be difficult for some viewers to realise the conversations are all conjectural ie not based on what really was said. I read that Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress for the show cost £30,000 while for the actual dress HRH had to save her ration coupons for the material. Wedding of Princess Elizabeth