Believe it or not, the tabulated votes (by way of comments and emails) for the winner of the Famous Book We'll Be Trying to Read on the Lurching Belching Overcrowded Bus or While Sitting on the Dusty Sidelines during a Soccer Scrimmage in Which Our Kid Languishes on the Bench for Most of the Game project reveal that Moby-Dick and Great Expectations are locked in a tie for first ("This is what I'd rather read") and second ("But I'd be okay with this one because I'm a polite person").

So this is my proposition: What if we read both books? What if we alternate chapter by chapter and accidentally discover strange connections and inconsistencies between the novels? Already the Spooky Book Fates have been toying with the Pip link. Who knows?--perhaps Ahab and Magwitch, Ishmael and Pumblechook are next.

Anyway, if you hate this idea, tell me. If you like it, tell me. If you're indifferent, I suppose you can tell me too.

In sort of unrelated news, my essay about Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley is out in the new issue of the Sewanee Review. This is probably her most underread novel (if you don't count The Professor, an early version of Villette that features a particularly nasty main character). Shirley is set in Yorkshire, and the plot centers around the weavers' uprisings against the mill owners and the interesting young ladies who are caught in the fray. But per usual, it also features Charlotte and her famous authorial interruptions. If you happen to have read this book, I'd like to hear what you have to say about it because, for some reason, it's turned out to be one that I reread often.

And now back to canning tomatoes, making bread, editing textbooks, and driving boys to soccer practice. Don't forget to write.