Well, apart that I was proud that I could read the text in 4 hours I derived no more pleasure out of that than that. There a few instances were I found great delight in reading her, and that was when she got into a sort of attrition with her father in a boat, opinions were dished and Victoria took it for what it was. However, at other times I got the sense that she was like a drink that slowly intoxicates. In retrospect, I came to think that much of biographies at times resort to what we nowadays refer to as name dropping, at least that’s the case for this victorian period in which somehow I ended up in.
I have admired Virgina Woolf for a long time now, to the point of having gone to a theater play named Who’s of afraid of Virgina woolf? back in the early 90’s in San Diego, California, without understanding a iota of it and only going there because of the significance of the event. And then there is that line somewhere, I forget where, that has ever since haunted me, ” …you have to read a book twice, at least, to fully understand it …” something I never managed to do fully. Modern fiction was of course one of those text that parts water but at any rate, A Sketch of the Past was to my opinion at times very dull and at times only a few bubbles of joy did pop up now and then.