Fast-forward some five or six years.

Michel Faber's Under the Skin, a 'strange, disturbing, genre-defying short novel', turned out to be one of the most fascinating reads in recent memory (I must revisit it soon). Of course I am eager to read more books by Faber, and so another second-hand shop (in another city in another country in another life) delivers yet another copy of The Crimson Petal and White.  This time I bought it. It bears no resemblance to Bridget Jones, Dan Brown, nor The Celestine Prophecy. Instead it reads like Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet written by the step-child of John Fowles.

The Crimson is a Victorian novel written for the 21st century. Like Waters' first few books, it explores the underbelly of Victorian society in a way that Charles Dickens could not: the prostitutes, the corpses dragged from the Thames, the blood, the gore, the shame. Faber has a writerly touch which infuses the book with tiny postmodern flourishes - an omniscient narrator breaking the fourth wall, texts within texts and many characters being authors themselves. His touch is light enough not to irritate, but occasionally it is almost too light:  mid-novel it almost disappears only to reappear just before the end. Knowing references to "proper" Victorian novels abound. Readers who have read Collins' The Woman in White, Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Dickens' Great Expectations will savour Faber's small nods; readers who comes to The Crimson without any 19th C novels behind them will enjoy The Crimson as a rollicking good read.

And it is a very good read. I find it difficult to find faults with The Crimson, but at the same time it did not captured me in the same way that Under the Skin did. It is significantly less raw and more conventional (by current standards - certainly not by 19th C standards!). I finished reading it today and found out that the novel has been commissioned for a four-part BBC drama. And perhaps that sums up my sole problem with the book: it is a novel thriving on exploring the dark side of society, and yet it is polite enough to become a Sunday evening BBC costume drama.

Kimfobo at Reading Matters has a superb review, as does Tom of A Common Reader. Maybe The Crimson Petal and the White is still just  tainted in my mind by sharing those shelves with Bridget Jones et al all those years ago.

Let us recap what happened last time I read one of Ms Thomas' books:

I do not know why I’ve read three Scarlett Thomas novels because if you take away the colourful packaging of a) metafiction (“The End of Mr Y”), b) anti-consumerism (“PopCo”) and c) popculture (“Going Out”) you get pretty much the same novel. New Age health solutions? Check. Schrödinger’s cat? Check. Main protagonist being into her math puzzles? Check. Slightly deviant sexual orientation painted in a fairly vague way? Check. C-category drug use? Check. Vegetarianism or some variant upon it? Check. Internet featuring heavily? Check.

But I still like her novels (..) even if they feel like a Linda McCartney meal. You know, easily digested vegetarian fare with a touch of celebrity to it?

Our Tragic Universe? It reads like a diluted version of the above padded with Narratology for Dummies, Tarot cards, jam-making and pages about how difficult it is to, er, knit socks. Everything falls into place once Scarle Meg figures out how to knit socks on double-pointed needles. I wish I were making this up.

Okay, a more sophisticated approach:

Clearly Our Tragic Universe wants to have a plotless plot or even be that paradoxical beast: an approachable antinovel. Whatever plot it has, it revolves around our protagonist attempting to write a hip, Zeitgeisty novel without a plot. Ah, funnily enough the novel itself mirrors the non-existing novel within. So far, so refreshingly clever (or depressingly metafictional, depending upon your mood). Sadly, Scarlett Thomas knows how to do this intellectually (we know this because the books bangs on and on about the theories) but her novelistic chops let her down.

Our Tragic Universe is a mess, and not even an entertaining mess.

Scarlett Thomas thanks Andrew Crumey in her notes. Crumey writes the sort of novel that Thomas thinks (or wishes or pretends because her books are all about pretending) she is writing. Go seek them out. I'm currently thirty pages into David Mitchell's number9dream - he is that rare beast: an author who is a chameleon but also is constantly himself. Mitchell does marvellous things with narrative structure and is essentially a storyteller at heart. Another author I would recommend you read instead of spending time/money on Our Tragic Universe.

(Our Tragic Universe is actually worse than my other recent read, Julia Quinn's Splendid, which is terribly sad because Splendid is set in Regency London and has characters slipping  in and out of 1990s Valley-speak.)

Almost four years ago I uprooted myself from Denmark. I packed twenty-four boxes and my suitcase, and I moved across the North Sea. I moved from my own two-bedroom flat to a flat I shared with others. Most of my belongings languished in unopened boxes until Other Half and I found the apartment where we now live. Twenty-four boxes. Fifteen of the boxes were filled with books.

In my Copenhagen flat I had a wall of bookshelves and the bookshelves were packed. I had books stacked on the window sills, on top of chairs and, yes, on the floor. I had books in the attic too. In other words, I had to choose between my books: which ones were important enough to go on that journey with me; which ones could be replaced; which ones were unimportant enough to simply be given away?

I bought small stickers and started sorting my library.

Green sticker: you will come with me, you are part of me, we will never part. Yellow sticker: I need to think about us; it is complicated; will I find you again in a dusty secondhand bookshop? Red sticker: sorry but we are over; it's not you it is me; you are replaceable; what was I thinking?

I left eighty per cent of my books behind me when I moved.

Regrets? I have a few, and not too few to mention. I gave away books I never thought I would read or re-read and now I often find myself running my finger along the spines looking for that Angela Carter novel I once began but never finished. There are huge gaps where Henry James and Charles Dickens used to reside. I really regret getting rid of my literary theory course books because I had some fabulous marginal notes and now that my brain is wasting away, I would love to curl up with Plato and those marginal notes.

And do not get me started on why I brought a standard paperback edition of James Joyce's Ulysses with me, but got rid of all those Georgette Heyers I have had to re-purchase. Self-delusion, I think.

Nowadays my library has mingled with Other Half's. We have a lot of Iain Banks, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson where once I had very few or none. We are running out of shelf-space once more (I have a cunning plan called "two-books-deep shelving") and I despair at Other Half's tendency to not put books back where they belong (I try to keep our fiction books alphabetised by author and under each author by date of publication).

And I feel haunted by books past because when I am standing in front of the bookshelves, I keep looking for the books that got away.

Having said that, I am mostly the same person I was fifteen years ago. I am older with a few new scars and bruises. I am also a bit wiser, less sociable, and more forgiving. I like the same things I did fifteen years ago (books, computer games, cake, my bed, old Hollywood musicals, vintage clothes, typography, Eurovision, and dogs) but I have added new things (my gawjuss Scottish boyfriend, yarn, coffee, philosophy, and matching colours). I think my 1995-self and my 2010-incarnation would get along just fine, although I bet my 1995-self would be appalled at my hairstyle (I just had my hair cut this past week and I am appalled).

In fact, almost fifteen years ago I made a deal with a good friend (who I miss dearly over here in Scotland). She would cook me a fancy three-course dinner if I wrote a book. Now it could not be just any old book - it had to be a special kind of book. My friend did not expect me to write an academic treatise nor did she want me to write a big literary sensation. She wanted me to write a frothy piece of Regency Romance.

I have read a lot of RRs - they are my comfort foods, my security blankets. I grew up in a household devoted to the weeklies' feuilletons, our local library's stash of Jalna-like books and, of course, Barbara Cartland (who I blame for my youthful infatuation with Lord Byron). Later I discovered Georgette Heyer who may be frothy but never nauseating (unlike Cartland). Today I go through phases: I may read a lot of RRs over a few weeks but then several years pass before my next RR frenzy. These phases usually coincide with stress, feeling homesick or going through a rough patch. Comfort foods and security blankets, indeed.

Could I write a passable RR? I think I could come up with a suitable plot involving, say, a Scottish laird's daughter who is sent to London for the season - on the way she meets a dashing highwayman who happens to be a notorious rake settling a wager. Add a couple of dogs, a duel, a dollop of gambling debt and a waltz at Almack's and I think we have a winner. Now all I have to do is write the darn thing and that fancy three-course dinner will be mine, MINE!

.. My younger self would be tempted, my 2010 self will probably just make the three-course dinner and skip all the writing.

In other time-travel-related news, Doctor Who made me cry this week with an episode about Vincent van Gogh, of all people. Your mileage may vary - the episode has divided fans in various online fora - but I took a great deal from it about beauty, art and life.

Completely unrelated: Congratulations are due to SoCherry who is on her way to becoming an honest woman and to Paula who ran a charity race today. Two of my best friends here in Scotland and they keep on amazing me.

• With a few modifications, this is how I'd like to live. I would not sort my books by colour (in fact, it is a pet-peeve of mine), I would tone down the pattern-upon-pattern thing, and I would go for a different IKEA sofa*, but overall this is my sort of home. It has that Scandinavian-midcentury/vintage-thriftiness/art-junkie aesthetic I like.
• As I keep saying, I am not getting back into dress-making. Nope. Not a chance. Having said that, I am drooling over this sewing project. There is no way that I'd look anything like the girl in the photos, but that is one fetching dress. I never know what to wear during summer but I like the idea of wearing pretty cotton frocks. But I'm not going to make one for myself.
• Not getting back into dress-making does not mean I cannot look at gorgeous fabric, though. Spoonflower supplies a design/print-on-demand fabric service. Look! Steampunk-inspired fabric! Fabric inspired by early American feminist writer! UK-based company, Clothkits, sells beautiful Liberty fabric designed by Grayson Perry. Sigh.
• Meanwhile Danish ladies' magazines keep publishing lovely free knitting patterns (mostly donated by yarn companies). My recent finds include this awesome cardigan, and a very cool top. I might even have yarn for the top.. Hmmm.

* yes, I have opinions on IKEA sofas. I'm a bit scared by this.

And on a completely different topic, take a look at this MeFi post about the quality of paper used in contemporary publishing.

"Eight years ago we started to notice the shift in buying patterns from free-sheet Permanent Paper to groundwood paper for hardcover books. Groundwood is the type of paper used in newspapers and mass market paperbacks, and its production is such that it is much lower-quality and degrades more quickly than traditional book publishing paper." What makes a book permanent?

The discussion quickly descends into a "well, why print books at all now the digital revolution is here" argument. I have nothing against digital publishing nor against digital archiving (in fact, I support digital archiving as it allows for storage on an unprecedented scale whilst not taking up much room), but I do take issue with people saying books are going to vanish within the next thirty years because they are too low-tech to be anything but obsolete. Despite globalisation, that is a very First-World argument.

The Book's low-tech nature is exactly why it is going to survive - and why books needs to be of better quality. Needing the Book is not about cherishing the object itself, but understanding its role in the dissemination of knowledge. Oh, but the internet! Oh, but Kindle! Oh, but what about people who have no access to the internet, or have limited/censored access? What about people living in areas where electricity is a scarce commodity reserved for the elite? Picking up a book "only" requires you to be able to read. Using a Kindle or the internet requires compatible technology, electricity, the ability to navigate and process information online, stable access, knowledge of how to download content/patch your software .. and then how to use your reading device.

(I miss working with print culture - can you tell?)

The Little Stranger is not Waters' opus magnum. It is an uneven novel - less sure of where it is going than Waters' other novels - and the dénouement will be too open-ended for some people. I really enjoyed it, in other words. Where once Waters threw Everything and the Kitchen Sink into her books, she leans back here and trusts herself as a writer. Her first two novels were particularly unsubtle, but The Little Stranger thrives on subtlety. I understand if other readers find its lack of resolve frustrating, but I would argue this may be the point of the novel. I said it of Alan Hollinghurst and now I shall say it of Sarah Waters: the Big Important Novel will happen at some point soon. As for now The Little Stranger has preyed on my mind that Waters' other novels have failed to do.

I have not read anything else by Rachel Seiffert and the decision to read The Dark Room was a quick 8am "I have to have something to read at lunch" grab. Twelve hours later and the book is finished. Another uneven read, but unlike The Little Stranger, the unevenness stems from an author unable to join the seams and smooth out the kinks in her material. The subject, the effect of the Second World War on Germans, is too big and too complex for Seiffert. Symbolic gestures replace genuine characterisation - the disabled boy becoming a fervent nationalist; the collaborator standing in for an absent grandfather - and the entire novel falls a bit flat. I think the second story of The Dark Room's three would make a good companion piece to Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, though, as they share similar characters and a similar setting, yet tell two quite different stories.

Next: I think it is time to move away from books set circa 1940-1950.

That is not to say that Nothing Ever Happens in Brooklyn. Eilis Lacey, our protagonist, goes to dances, finds a job, meets people and falls in love. Brooklyn has comedic touches too - some colourful characters, a baseball game, a stomach-churning journey across the Atlantic - but admittedly even the comedic touches are low-key. Oh, and there are some very, very big decisions being made by ordinary people in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is about the the émigré experience. What does it really feel like leaving your country, your culture, your family and your friends for somewhere else? Reading Matters has an excellent take on this:

[Brooklyn] might be set in the 1950s but it touches on universal themes that resonate today, and I've yet to read anything that so perfectly captures the profound sense of dislocation you feel when you swap one country for another and then return to your homeland for the first time.

In short, Brooklyn is a superb paean to homesickness and the émigré experience. I think I identified with it so strongly because it shows, in an understated but powerful manner, how all emigrants have to make that god-awful decision about whether to stay or go (..).

I took my time reading Brooklyn, mostly because I did not want to become upset on public transport or in my workplace. I hesitate to use this word, but reading this novel was a profound reading experience - I put much of myself and my own life into it. It will stay with me for a long time.

I am now currently reading Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger. I have a little theory about Waters the novelist and so far The Little Stranger plays along with my theory. It is also very good thus far.

• A few weeks ago a perceptive blogger wrote about volcanic activity in Iceland. Seeing as Northern Europe's airports are more-or-less shutdown due to a massive cloud of volcanic ash coming from Iceland, you might find it an interesting background read. Also: Katla, another Icelandic volcano, could well be about to get ready to rumble.
• Speaking of Eyjafjallajökull, have you seen this fantastic photo taken by a local farmer?
• And this is how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull (links to sound). Not what I expected.
• Pictish writing?! The idea sounds ludicrous. Language Log explains.
• Best places to eat in Glasgow for the budget-conscious? The Guardian has a few ideas.. and handily includes a photo of the 78 (one of my favourite hang-outs) plus the opening paragraph explains why I love my new home.
• If you love fashion history or even costume history, chances are you will have heard of Prinny - King George the IV - a man so fond of bling that he built entire bling buildings where he could wear fabulous clothes with his bling and eat outlandish food. Glass of Fashion has been to see an exhibition of some of Prinny's outfits.
• Literary T-shirts. The double-think t-shirt is pretty cool. Others leave me wanting.
• Douglas Coupland has teamed up with Penguin Books for their 75th anniversary. Speaking to the Past is seriously gorgeous stuff with typical Coupland 'little ironies'. One for the bookmarks.
• Finally, Auntie Beeb asks why we need oil painters in a war zone.

Rufus Wainwright last night was very good, but I had certain reservations. More on that later - I also have a finished object to share and some thoughts about a certain free-for-all pattern.

Mainly, though, I have been trying to finish my little red cardigan. I have had a couple of DVD marathons (verdict: Oh, I love Gregory Peck, the smallest gestures can be completely devastating, and Neil Finn should ditch the falsetto & Johnny Marr) and I'm now one tiny frill and a buttonband away from completion. I am thinking Synecdoche, New York might work for that. Then, it's upwards and onwards. New things to knit, new projects to fret about.

Oh, because I have certain weaknesses, these blog posts were really amusing: Create Your Own Regency Romance and Call In The Angry Villagers: 10 Clichés We Can Live Without. I swear I haven't touched any such reads in months.

And finally, I just loved this little throwaway line by John Cameron Mitchell: "There's no question (..) that Lady Gaga and Hedwig are from the same clan." So true and now I don't know why I didn't twig this earlier.

Recently she wrote a poem about David Beckham's injury which sees him out of the England World Cup squad.

Achilles (for David Beckham)

Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,
they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
but when Odysseus came,

with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
and it was sport, not war,

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his charmed foot on the ball...

but then his heel, his heel, his heel...

The poem was originally published in The Daily Mirror, a tabloid, which employs Duffy as a regular columnist. Meanwhile, The Guardian, my newspaper of choice, looks at the poem approvingly but the comments section is where I found the biggest thrills. I particularly enjoyed FinneyontheWing, IantovonScranto and tw*tbeak but I strongly recommend the entire section. It is filled with limp poetry, bizarre imagery and iambic pentameter.