If you’ve somehow missed being hounded by me to read (first) Middlemarch and (in the New Year) My Life in Middlemarch, you can catch up here.
You have now (ideally, but it’s almost a hundred and fifty years old, you can take another couple of weeks) finished George Eliot’s masterpiece, and have arrived in this place to share your impressions with the rest of us. Share away! It’s been such a pleasure reading this wonderful book with you, and seeing what gifs you come up with is always a delight. Take THAT, somber world of literary analysis.
And now, to the novel’s end. What are your thoughts? Rebecca wanted to share how much she enjoyed your appreciation for Mary Garth, and how thrilled she is that you are responding to Garth’s good sense and intelligence, having herself taken many years to get interested in Mary Garth. This, again, is something that really struck me on this trip through Middlemarch, as well as a recurring theme in Rebecca’s own book, the idea that your favourite characters may change from one read to the other, that it’s a book which will mean very different things to you at different times, and which you can expect to read as though it were for the first time at 25, 40, 65, and (knock wood) 109.
Deluge us with your opinions.
Having done so, you may now enjoy/mourn a brief hiatus from the world of George Eliot, as we will be picking back up after the January 28th release of My Life in Middlemarch to do some giveways and then joyously reimmerse ourselves in the written word. I begin to overuse my superlatives in praising Rebecca Mead’s book, but I do promise that the vast majority of people who have a difficult time thinking of themselves as being meaningfully separate from the books and characters they’ve loved in their time will adore it as much as I do, which is a great deal.
Here is my last (or is it? can you ever trust a blogger) reminder for those who wish to attend Rebecca’s January 29th, 7pm event at the New York Public Library (discount code for Toasties, so if you enter TOAST at checkout, you’ll pay $15 instead of $25, and will skip service fees.) If you want to come early to attend the little private meeting with Toast readers and Rebecca prior to the event (jealous!), email me (it’s in the masthead) to get yourself on the list, and plan to arrive by 5:45pm to check in at the box office and be shown to the room.
