Reading: Shirley (the homestretch)

After 350+ pages, Charlotte Brontë decided to throw up her hands and go silly. Long lost mothers? (Who weren't really lost in the first place, or at least not missed.) Forgotten brothers? Mysterious illnesses? RABIES?!?

I have about 100 pages, and then I can bid a fond farewell to this particular bit of silliness. I don't know that this knocks the novel out of it's #2-on-Mike's-Brotë-list. I still think Shirley is a better book than Jane Eyre -- but that's because I don't cotton much to older, meek, oh-what-the-hell-why-not-St.-John Jane. I like young, sassy, I'll-escape-hell-by-not-dying Jane.

Up next on my list is another Charlotte Brontë, The Professor. Maybe. I really need to think long and hard about this alphabetically-we-read set-up I've got going on. I mean, guys, I have a lot of Dickens I haven't read yet. I may take a break and read a biography of George Eliot I picked up so my friend Steve and I can finish arguing about stupid George Lewes. I blame George Lewes for Romola, one of the worst books Eliot ever wrote, and one of the most unnecessary books you'll ever read about Savonarola. (Though I have to admit that I have the tiniest bit of a crush on Savonarola. I think it's his nose. Also, his monomania.)