What I'm Reading: A. S. Byatt, Possession

Less cranky, but inclined to re-read books that I've enjoyed in the past, in the hope that I'll like them just as well this time. A. S. Byatt's Possession works equally well as a mystery, a romance, and a literary tour-de-force. I'm impressed by anyone who can write reams of convincing poetry in the 19th-century style, a talent so far removed from my own that I can feel admiration instead of irritability.