Reading Update

Last week I finished Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Moll Flanders.

The former depressed. Very unhappy ending. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen until the 1970s.

The latter book was a totally enjoyable novel that was basically an extended testimony of "my life before Christ" and a little bit of "my life now that I've repented" at the end. Moll is a likable character who doesn't set out to commit adultery or make a life of thievery, but her poverty and her poor choice of companions keeps drawing her into it. The author provides a fascinating extended case study in the nature of temptation and human rationalization. What disturbed me about the book, though, was that when Moll is presented as having truly repented near the end of her life, she still uses the gold stuff she's stolen to build a new life for herself. It seemed to me that true repentance should mean refusal to gain from crime. Return what was stolen and give back fourfold, anyone?

I'm now forty pages into Emma. I adore Jane Austen. Austen is the capital of Texas! The problem: Since Emma is one of my top three fave movies, I experience no suspense reading this book. Some of the speeches I already pretty much have memorized. Of COURSE she is going to marry Mr. Knightly. And that does sort of keep me from staying up late. Maybe a good thing, since it took my body clock a day per time zone to get back to Central time?