And Finally Back to Oxford

Let me tell you, readers, that I have had one helluva week. I might have to do a little backtracking through time on this blog, because I realize I haven’t really blogged much while I’ve been here. It’s because in the three weeks that I’ve been here I have powered through Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and I’m am about fifty pages from finishing Mansfield Park.

I finished Jane Eyre on Monday night (bribing myself with a milkshake from Shakespeare’s, which is probably my favorite new place in Oxford. I got an “All’s Well that Ends Well”, which had Reese’s, Minstrels, and some other candy I didn’t know in it, but was delicious. It’s the only one I’ve had there, but I plan to go back at some point to try an “As You Like It”, which looked absolutely scrumptious.

So far, Jane Eyre has been my favorite book we’ve read, and I can’t wait to finish reading the rest of the books (only two more, thank goodness!) so that I can get to rereading that sucker. It was so good, and I have no idea why I have left it so long to read! You know when you’re reading a book that is just so good you never want it to end? I smiled the entire way through the book (even though the ending is rather tragic… until the conclusion of course!) It makes me want to read the rest of the Bronte’s work as soon as I can... Which certainly won’t be in the next three weeks!

This morning, I had to turn in a paper (on Jane Eyre, which was rather easy and I churned that out last night in no time at all) and I had to do a presentation on Mansfield Park, which, if you have heard me talk at all about Austen novels in the last two or three months, is the most boring thing I’ve read in a long time. It is brilliant, of course, and already after one class period I am more sympathetic to Fanny’s character and her situation than I was while I was reading the book, but since I had to present this morning (on the landscapes used in the book) I have been quietly panicking all week about this assignment. I read, essentially three hundred and fifty pages yesterday, and didn’t move from my room for hours (until I moved to the pub and had a pint of cider while I read. This made the book a lot more tolerable!) I think that by the end of this next week when we finish discussing the book, I will be a lot fonder of the book, but as it is right now, I’m blogging on a train instead of reading the book. I also have to start reading Dracula this weekend… which will be a trip!

I have one more blog for you, which I will get to posting momentarily. I'm safely ensconced in Chez Powling (the Rosslyn location) and will be spending the weekend with almost all of my cousins in one go! More pictures will surely follow. :)