We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Another long-ago gift from Kymm, which I left on the shelf for years and then read in two hours after I finished The Haunting of Hill House. I liked this one even better, but I am glad I never got invited to Shirley Jackson’s house for dinner.

The Haunting of Hill House. I don’t know why it took me so long to read this book. Kymm bought it for me years ago, and I have read the first five pages over and over, but I’ve wandered away from it every time. I don’t know what my problem was because this is an excellent example of my second favorite kind of pleasure reading (this being my very favorite): a well-told but slightly overblown gothic story.

The reader on the audio version is first-rate, but I read about half of this the old-fashioned way because the story is a little hard to follow on audio. Also, the audio scared the shit out of me. I would have my headphones on in the kitchen, chopping onions or something while Eleanor crept up that damn staircase onto the ledge, and Jeremy would come up behind me and say, “Hey!” and I would jump three feet.

The Haunting of Hill House. Wow. After three false starts with audio books that just weren’t grabbing me, this one is such a relief. That amazing opening paragraph is even better read aloud by a good reader, and this reader is very, very good.

Mansfield Park. Everyone tells me I will hate this one, but I don’t so far. I sort of hate Fanny, but not as much as I expected to hate her.

The Years With Laura Díaz. I am reading this for the book club, but I am way behind because it is turning out to be a really difficult read for me. It’s not hard to understand; I am just having trouble reading it in chunks longer than thirty pages or so. I am also feeling a little skeptical about the translation.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I really loved the portion of this book that I managed to survive, but I just can’t stand the reader, Frederick Davidson. He made David Copperfield unbearable, and he made The Tenant of Wildfell Hall unbearable in exactly the same way.

He’s not terrible like Flo Gibson is terrible, but he reads in this sort of smug-sounding British accent that tends toward the whiny, and all of his female characters sound insipid. His male characters sound bored and arrogant. This is very unfortunate, because he reads an awful lot of books — 108 separate titles at Audible. I have his version ofThe Brothers Karamazov and I am sure I will never even attempt it now. Ditto The Aeneid and Ivanhoe. He always sounds fine on previews, but after about an hour or so he’s insufferable.

I have gone ahead and ordered a paperback copy of this novel, though, because I do want to read it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife. I made it about an hour into this one before I gave up in disgust. I hated every thing about it in the meantime:

• The readers. Especially the woman, who inflects like she is reading Peter Rabbit to a crowd of heavily sedated four-year-olds, and who mispronounced “Derrida.” And the man, who said “cock” like it was the first time he’d ever said that word and he had to repress a giggle.
• The sex. Which was skeevy and gross. Sex can be hard to take in audio format, and this was particularly bad.
• The dialogue. Save me from bad dialogue. And the descriptions. And the everything.

After I wrote about my feelings at the Usual Suspects, several people posted that they had thought when they were reading the book that I would hate it. Ha. Sometimes it is good to be predictable.

Dracula. I can’t believe I had never read this book. I loved it. It works very nicely on audio, and since I am in a weird post-exam space right now where I can’t seem to read anything written after 1900 but I still don’t want to read anything difficult, Dracula was perfect.

It was interesting to compare the various film versions to the novel; I think the novel is better than any of the movies, but I was a little surprised to see that the Gary Oldman version, while taking substantial liberties, was not a complete deviation. And I knew Joss Whedon hadn’t invented that vampires-turning-to-dust thing out of whole cloth.

This one is definitely destined to be a favorite, one that I reread every few years or so.

Then There Were None. I have read every Christie novel at least four times, most of them more often than that. Most memorably, I reread the entire collection — including the short stories — while I was studying for the bar exam in 1993. I own them all in cheap, falling-apart paperbacks that I store on a shelf over my closet.

I haven’t reread any for some time, because the last time I tried I could not get past the cliches and the terrible prose and all the Agatha Christie nonsense, but I decided to reread this one after seeing it mentioned in a movie review.

I don’t think I will go with my first impulse after I finished it, which was to chuck the whole collection into the recycling. I might get brain fever some day and need something easy to read, or I might someday have a sixth grader living in my house. But otherwise, I think these are just going to collect dust.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This short story collection is definitely an easy read, definitely reveals the formula for every Poirot/Hastings short story Agatha Christie ever wrote, and definitely enough Holmes to last me for at least a couple of weeks. I am still enjoying these but I think I need a little Holmes break.

Emma. Rereading this book has made me understand why I hated Jane Austen until a few years ago. I was assigned this book as a freshman in college, and I read only the first few chapters before giving up in disgust. Well, of course I did. Emma spends three-quarters of the book being completely insufferable. I nearly gave up this time, as well, even though I know she gets better.

This is not my favorite Austen, definitely not one I could reread every year.

Sense and Sensibility. I know a lot of people don’t like this one but it is one of my favorite Austen novels. Actually most Austen novels are one of my favorite Austen novels. I am easy like that.

It’s a little hard for me to believe that before I decided to go to grad school, I had never read past the first page or two of any Austen novel. I had been assigned Emma and Pride and Prejudice but had never bothered to read either one. I was never assigned any Austen in grad school (although Pride and Prejudice was on my exam list), but somehow during the last four years I worked my way through most of them. I still haven’t read Mansfield Park, and I’ve only read Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey once each, but this was my third time through Sense and Sensibility, and I’ve read Pride and Prejudice five times, and Persuasion twice. I am just starting my third trip through Emma, too.

I think this makes me a fan?