Wonderful to know that! You are making me envy you, now 🙂 Hope I can see the real paintings one day.

It’s a shame you can’t see the real paintings. They’re beautiful – there are bits of maps and words and things, it’s wonderful.

Okay, I will try Slammerkin. I don’t know if I like reading about clothes and fashion, but I think I might.

I say read Night Watch next. It might be my favorite. But all her books are good (except I haven’t read Affinity yet). But bump all the Waters down to a lower priority, after reading the Harriet Vane books starting with Strong Poison. I don’t know if they’re better books but I love them more. :p

(Sometimes, when I feel like I’m not having enough time to read, I take a night where I stay up all night reading. As long as I only do it once or twice a year, it doesn’t get too exhausting.)

Yay! I hope you like them! 🙂

I don’t hate you for not liking Fingersmith! I am a little sad, but it’s not one of those books that I can’t imagine a single reason for somebody not liking it.

The Sealed Letter isn’t like Fingersmith at all really. And it wasn’t just the Sarah Waters comparisons that made it not work for me. I felt like it was a lot of the same thing over and over again – the protagonist kept being taken completely aback by the lies her friends told her, no matter how many times it happened. It wasn’t unrealistic, necessarily, but it was repetitive.

How do I not remember that? I read Ex Libris and really enjoyed it!

I know exactly what you mean about stretching intellectually. It wasn’t a heavy book that used up a whole bunch of my brain at once, but at the same time, it was a book that made me think. I liked that.

That is so shady. There were some shady student/teacher activities going on in my high school (secondary school) too. Most of the time I was there I thought it was just rumors, but later on I discovered that there was some real funny business going on.

Oh, I loved Night Watch too. I want to give Night Watch a hug and indeed read it over again right now.

Yeah, the incident. I wasn’t expecting it (I read the end! but it didn’t say!), and I nearly stopped reading after it. I kind of feel like I should have stopped reading.

But I probably went into The Sealed Letter with unrealistically high expectations. The component parts made it sound like it would have to be the BEST BOOK EVER. I need to try another Donohue book and just expect slightly less.

Also? You are really nice. 🙂

Hahaha, I feel just the same. “Sapphic love”. I’m never saying “lesbian” EVER AGAIN. (Although they both refer to exactly the same thing, so I’m not sure what the difference is.)

It’s not English, Mumsy. It’s Latin. You needed to take my Latin class in high school.