And...the past two nights I have finished two novels that I have been in the progress of reading.

Saturday night, it was "Death in Holy Orders" by P.D. James. Typical good James police procedural meets psychological profile of people involved in a murder. The one sort-of unsatisfying thing is I felt that the murderer was not detailed enough early in the book - the murderer was kind of a subsidiary character and not one for which you really felt any sympathy. But then, I suppose that's part of the point of murder mysteries. But then again, the murderer was not a person I was "gunning" for from the middle of the book (when they began to close in on Cain). I didn't enjoy this one as much as some of her others (such as "A Certain Justice" or "Unnatural Causes")

I also finally finished "Great Expectations", which I suppose I SHOULD have read at 13 or so, to follow the typical American-education pattern. I enjoyed it but felt the ending was somewhat predictable. Not that that's a bad thing - it's nice sometimes to have a novel wrapped up neatly at the end.

Now, I am faced with the lovely dilemma of what book to start next. At this point in time I am strongly leaning towards a long historical novel called "In a Dark Wood Wandering," set in the late middle ages. (It was originally published in Dutch). But I might change my mind when I go home and look at my bookshelves tonight. I don't quite feel ready for another fat character-filled Victorian novel, or I might grab one of my many Trollopes off the shelf.

or maybe I will finally read "The Once and Future King." Or maybe I will decide I want something Victorian and take up one of Wilkie Collins' works (I still don't feel ready for Trollope again - the last one I started, I had to make lists of the characters so I could remember who was related to whom.)