The Hidden Hand

I finished another book!

The Hidden Hand (by E.D.E.N. Southworth) is basically a satirical commentary on Gothic Romance novels in the 19th century (aka, nerd humor). It follows the adventures of Capitola, who is a mix between Pippi Long Stockings and Huck Finn. They compare her to a female Don Quixote a bunch of times in the novel, if that helps-- she gets into all sorts of adventures, often related to her either dressing as a boy or acting like one. There's a lot of role reversal going on.

There's all sorts of drama and mystery, which just gets more and more ridiculous as the book goes on. It ends a little abruptly, with the villain dying of an illness and everything sorting itself out about 20 pages later.

"Women always like men with a spice of the devil in them."

"There are some persons whom we can never make happy. It is not in them to be so."

I didn't really keep track of the quotes in this book like I have in others; I fell behind and it takes longer to do annotations while I'm reading, so I just skipped it all together.

In other books news, I am hopelessly stuck with Pride and Prejudice. I'm going to have to start it all over, AGAIN, because I went so long without picking it back up. It's not even that I find it boring- I love it- but for whatever reason, I'm never able to finish it. I'm also in the middle of Damned, by Chuck Palahniuk, which is all about this 14 year old girl who goes to hell, but we aren't really sure why (the running Palahniuk-ism is that she overdosed on marijuana). I'm not loving it as much as Invisible Monsters, but it's still Chuck. Haven't come across any robin egg's blue yet, so I'm waiting for that.

So there is my boring, English major update. I'm going to stop promising that I'm going to get more disciplined with my reading, and just admit that this semester is going to be a slow one in the way of reading.