I Think This Post's Mostly Filler

As I briefly mentioned in my In My Mailbox post, I have missed blogging for a while.  I had all sorts of plans and then life intruded.  I had little access to the Internet and was at my parents' house where there is the benefit of all the books I can't cart around the country with me but also not much time for blogging.  So, this post is mostly to have something here before I do a new review/something because I want to create at least a semblance of this blog being live (which it is).  Though this will primarily be a list, because I like them.

- Am rereading Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers - I'd forgotten what a weird book it is.  It's a detective novel without a murder (fairly rare for the Golden Age of Crime) but that's not what I find weird: it's how much of Sayers' own thoughts and beliefs are on the page.  She's addressing her own concerns about writing, feminism, honesty and relationships, and there are lines which Harriet thinks which are clearly Sayers talking about her own work.  It's bizarre but fascinating.  I will have to do a full review of it, just because it is so odd but also brilliant.

- Have decided to do both Group Reads for October at A Literary Odyssey: Dracula and Dante's Inferno (sign up post is here for anyone interested).  I've read Dracula before but haven't read it all the way through for ages; I usually just read the fantastic bit at the beginning with Jonathan Harker trapped in the castle because that is so creepy.  I've never read Inferno but it's one of those books I know bits about, mostly thanks to crime dramas in which the serial killer is recreating elements of the poem with their murders in an effort at originality (it's always Dante or the Bible, televisual killers often lack creativity).

- Doctor Zhivago is still looming at me as the last challenge book I have to read this year.  It scares me a little, and I think I may have to photocopy the cast list at the front so I can keep all the Russian names straight.

- I really want to read more Dickens, and that is something I never thought I'd say.  Am unsure whether to do it chronologically (though am not overly fussed about Pickwick Papers) or start with the books I want to read - although that may means I never get to the ones I'm not sure about.  Mostly, I want to read Bleak House.  And reread Oliver Twist. 

That's about it, really (I hate it when a post runs to an end).  I do have plans, and am undecided about whether to keep reading new books quickly or to go back and reread slowly for the sake of reviewing.  I will definitely be doing the Group Reads, though, so that is something to give me structure for the month.