Persephone Reading Weekend, and a thank-you note

Persephone Reading Weekend -- sure to become my favorite long holiday weekend, now and forever -- is almost over (see below). Thank you (and congratulations!) to Claire and Verity, who put it together and brought us (so many of us!) together. 

I still have a small part of each of my Persephones (no. 30 and no. 32) to finish, and I like ending the weekend that way. I don't want either book to end, and I definitely, certainly don't want to rush either one. I did spend most of today reading most of The Carlyles at Home,  and I'm just as smitten as I was with Kitchen Essays.  What I've been noticing from reading about everyone else's reading this weekend is that the Persephone catalog has an incredibly wide range of books, and in a way this one is an incredibly wide range of books in itself. You could read it for literary biography, for 19th-century social or cultural history, for a depiction of domestic practices (albeit ones that skirted what was normal), for information on medical treatments or house-building or fashion or extermination, for another argument about the limited opportunities for Victorian women, or just to smile every two paragraphs or so. I hope your reading has been as perfect for you. {But it does make me wonder...are there other biographies that focus on domestic details? If so, I want to read them, whomever they're about.)

The weekend isn't quite over yet...I had planned all sorts of baking and quiet domestic ritual to go along with my choice of books, but instead I'm looking forward to a cup of tea, some laundry-folding, a scratch dinner of truly excellent leftovers ('In the Cook's Absence'? 'Old Friends with New Faces'? 'Tray Food?' 'For the Too Fat'?) and some more reading...until 8:00, when I will turn from good books to as many sightings of Colin Firth as are humanly possible.

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