I adore the books of Anthony Trollope, though telling people I do so can be rather awkward as they horribly often get confused and think I am referring to Joanna Trollope... He really is not terribly well known nowadays but he is without a doubt one of my favourite authors.
Over the years I have steadily worked my way through the bulk of his work, though since he wrote dozens of books I still have some great treats left. Nowadays, aware as I am that the numbers of Trollopes unread by me is dwindling I tend to save them for when I go on holiday. Typically long, deliciously familiar and always wittily entertaining (in a more masculinely amusing Jane Austen style) they make perfect holiday reading.
To his critics the books take a very long time to get to an ending you can rather predict from the beginning and they often claim that nothing happens in them. However, I would heartily disagree as the whole point about Trollope's books is the character development that occurs and the minutely perfect character portraits he creates of his often extensive cast for the reader's delight. His books also happen to be set in the wonderful world of the 19th century which I find endlessly delightful to read about.
'Lady Anna' is my current Trollope (half of it is left over from a city break I took last weekend before uni started up again) and is deliciously class conscious. 'Barchester Chronicles' of which there is a series are utterly terrific, but his very best work is 'The Way We Live Now' which was also made into an excellent BBC adaptation a few years ago starring the magnificent David Suchet.
Partying again tonight which should be jolly good fun though not on the dating front as all will be friends and none of the men are attractive to me. Actually one of them I did find rather enticing last year, however, I later worked out that that was almost solely because he was the president of the society I attended and it was the power that I found so attractive... I am now on the committee of the society myself and his stock has rather dropped with me, though I do still think him a very nice boy.
About 7 months since I became single which is lovely and I feel most comfortable and happy as a busy single girl. At the weekend I attended a tea party held by a friend (we all wore charming tea dresses) and after the tea and cakes we moved on to prosseco and started to confide. We got to talking about exes and the host told me about her ex-boyfriend whom she split up with around the same time that I split up with mine. They went on a break and she kissed someone, nothing more, yet he could not forgive and so they did not reunite and her broken heart has plagued her ever since. My ex would not forgive me for splitting up with him when I tried to reunite... I still don't know why not. Forgiveness is a hard thing to master, but I do believe that if you want to forgive then you can always find a way, where as if you have other reasons or even just feelings like stubbornness etc then you deny yourself the ability to forgive and so have to carry on indefinitely with the weight not forgiving leaves with you.
But forgiving too much is also a mistake. I have a very pretty friend who forgave her ex-boyfriend several times for cheating on her for he just kept doing it. While my friend with the married man I believe to also have been far too forgiving. She is currently waiting to hear if he is going to split up with her or leave his wife... I do not know which would be best for her in the long run, but for her sake right now I do hope he gives her a decision so that she can get on with her life.
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