Deeply Personal Confessions Only Made Because I’m Sure No One’s Watching.

If I’m not careful, I’ll soon be in a fair way to considering myself in love with Cassandra Mortmain.

For a few weeks in high school, I fancied myself in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder; and I’ve also been smitten by Harriet Vane now and again. But it’s a little creepier this time, if only because I’m far too old to be in love with a (fictional) seventeen-year-old, especially when I’ve been imagining her as played by Georgia Hensley eight or nine years hence.

It only means, of course, that I’ve fallen for Dodie Smith’s writing (as I fell for L. I. Wilder’s, and for D. L. Sayers’s). Still, I’ve been putting off doing any work this evening not only because of the bittersweet ending to I Capture the Castle, but because I feel that simply sitting and reveling in this melancholy mood is exactly the sort of thing that Cassandra would do.

I already use Good heavens! as an all-purpose interjection far too often; now I’m going to be hearing Jenny Agutter’s amused voice saying it every time. Not a bad legacy for a audiobook to leave me.

On the other hand, now I want to get my hands on a first edition . . . .