January 11, 2008 -- Friday evening

Reading Romola, by George Eliot, for her book club. Over the past eight years they have read Trollope, then Austen, then Dickens, Thackeray and now Eliot.

A favorite book--A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, about the French Revolution. She was impressed by the imagery of the revolution, like at the beginning, there is a scene in Paris where a cask of wine is being delivered. The cask falls off the cart and spills. People scoop it up from the cobblestones. The symbolism is very powerful, showing the poverty and foreshadowing spilled blood.

If she were to write her own book it would be a historical mystery novel, set in 1930's San Francisco.