I feel so very thankful for due South and the many, many links it has spawned this year for me. I needed something like this to distract me from my rabid insecurities, just as last year I needed Whose Line is it Anyway?. In short,

I've taken up attempting to read Great Expectations again. I have great expectations I'll actually finish this time. I'm up to chapter twelve! Yes, that is around page seventy-seven. This is the book I've spent the past year and a half picking up and putting down again in favour of fan fiction and educational texts. I told myself I wouldn't read any other original fiction until I finished the book, but I lapsed and read a couple of favourite Poirots before going at it. I shall prevail! I love Dickens, it's just that my attention span is so used to doing a thousand things a minute, I find it a tad difficult to concentrate during his incredibly long sentences which I have managed to adopt in my own writing.