Vanity Fair

I'm in the middle of reading Vanity Fair. As it's 672 pages long and the print is very very small, it will be a long while before I tell you all about it! Strange that I never read this classic while I was in college. Well, our English literature class wasn't a major focus. I remember we read a good bit of Joyce, which suited me fine, as I was already interested in everything Irish at that stage!

Anyways, the reason why I picked up Vanity Fair in our last Amazon order was that I had read an article about Reese Witherspoon (of Walk the Line fame - see my blog dated 12 February), and it said that she started being noticed after she starred in Vanity Fair (the movie). So I thought it would be interesting to read the book, although I haven't seen the movie yet. Now I'll have to wait until I'm finished the book before I can get the movie out in DVD. It's very enjoyable, but it's a big book, and I can only read so much at one sitting, as I have to read under my glasses to decypher the small font (old age - don't ask!)

One little line that caught my eye: "Osborne rose too, and shook him heartily by the hand, and said, "How do, my dear boy?" with a cordiality that made poor George's ambassador feel doubly guilty". An excellent example of how the English language is so versatile, using 2 words that mean the same thing in one sentence, one of Old-English origin (I think), and one of French origin - "heartily" and "cordiality" - "coeur" being the French word for "heart".