Well, I'm heartened to discover via my sitemeter that there are quite a few people out there reading Anne Bronte. Unfortunately it's clearly for a class, since they seem to be too lazy even to go to a store and buy the cliffnotes ("summery [sic] of anne bronte agnes grey", etc). No summaries OR summeries here, suckers! I must confess sometimes I am tempted to, as Odious once did with the word "ninja" to affect the old banner ads on Blogger, put up a post of the names of bestselling authors, interspersed with "review", "summary", and "synopsis". But I refrain.

I'm trying to prepare our cats for this afternoon's arrival of my mother and her two dogs and two cats. I don't think they quite understand, although Finn clearly senses something is going to happen, as he's been extremely affectionate all day. Lizzy just yowls, but that's hardly out of the ordinary. She's been particularly annoying lately ever since they destroyed one of their old favorite toys and consequently created a new superfavorite toy. A friend of ours bought them a toy called the bird last summer, and it is really an excellent gadget--a bunch of feathers tied to a string tied to a long flexible rod. When swung through the air it makes a soft swooshing sound that they find most tantalizing, and will leap magnificently to catch and disembowel it. Well, as with all pet toys, it finally met its end when the string broke and they carried off the remains to a unknown hiding place. Now, however, they find the remaining string tied to the rod an even better toy than any we've conceived of yet. Lizzy spends about half the day (and night!) lying on top of it yowling piteously at everyone who comes near. It's pathetic, but mostly really, really annoying.

I did start this post with the intention of writing something about books--not much, but something. Oh yes, since someone found the blog with a search for Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, I thought I'd mention that it's not nearly as good as others of hers that I've read. The heroine was much too wimpy, for all that Mrs. Gaskell tried to describe her as strong and righteous, and I was so disappointed that she ended up marrying who she did. From the moment he was introduced it was clear they'd end up together, and yet I kept hoping... He was kind of a jerk. Anyway, Cranford and Mary Barton are much better, so I'll just write this off as the one she wished she hadn't written.

Also, I've now read The Sound and the Fury. I can cross it off my list. At some point I may possibly read another Faulkner novel, since I did like The Reivers, and found Go Down, Moses fascinating, but on the other hand I may stick to books with apostrophes.