Northanger Abbey. Am I done with the Jane Austen yet? I am ready to be done with Jane Austen. This is still my least favorite of her novels. I don’t think it quite works as a satire because the satire is so uneven, and I think the target of the satire jumps around too much. Her later books are so perfect in their construction that the flaws in this one are especially obvious when you read it immediately after something like Pride and Prejudice.

I read this in a hammock on a Carribean beach while I was so sick that I lost seven pounds in five days. It was the only book I finished — I took the George MacDonald along as well, but it really sucked. I got so desperate that I was actually looking for a paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code in the airport before the flight home, but the bookstore only had hardbound copies, and I am not buying a hardbound copy of that stupid book.