I have read thirteen of the 100 chapters in The Way We Live Now, which is my thirteenth Trollope novel.
I think, though I am not fully committed to the idea, that the novels of Trollope will be my next long-haul reading project. It's just -- phew, that man wrote a lot of novels. He wrote f-o-r-t-y-s-e-v-e-n novels. FORTY-SEVEN. This is a lot of reading and I am already 52 years old. That's, like, the equivalent of three Dickens projects. It's a lot.
Even so, I am going to take a stab at it and see if it brings me joy. I've told you before about how much I enjoy his voice-- he had clearly been thinking for a long time about what makes people tick, and why they do the goofy things they do. The Way We Live Now involves some of the same characters and places I already know from the Palliser Chronicles, and that appeals to me as well. I do NOT love Mr. Melmotte. Have I read somewhere else that he is going to be exposed as a shameless fraud? Or is he just enough like Mr. Merdle from Little Dorrit that I know he's like a nineteenth-century Bernie Madoff? Or maybe I don't actually know that, and he is going to turn out to be a perfectly reputable businessman. I would be preeeetty surprised if that were the case, but life is full of unexpected happenings.
I am finding that it works well for me to read a chapter a night in bed. Reading faster-paced books in bed sometimes keeps me awake longer than is good for me, but Trollope is a very pleasant way to end the day: interesting but never heart-stopping, amusing but not hilarious. I never wake my husband up snort-laughing because I am reading Trollope, but his books often make me smile.
I am not making him sound particularly compelling, am I? If I were trying to start a Trollope club I'd have to rethink my approach entirely. Maybe I'd post some Instagram pictures of me making serious and interested faces at a Trollope novel while reading it over my açai bowl. Maybe I'd make a reel highlighting the funniest parts, except I'd have to learn how to make a reel first. I am pretty sure #Trollope is not going to be making the rounds among the hashtagging mom-fluencers, but luckily this has never been a mom-fluencer kind of blog.
You will just have to imagine me in my pajamas, smiling and nodding and then nodding off. Probably not the next big TikTok trend, but maybe, if you're looking for a way to ease into both sleep and Victorian literature, you would enjoy it too.
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