Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim

[readingredhead]

All I really want out of life is for a real-life romance to coincide with an academic one. Preferably we discover Austen's lost letters together, a la A. S. Byatt's Possession. Or maybe a surviving draft of First Impressions, I'm not really picky. I just want something that makes me feel love as much as I think it, and think it as much as I feel it. And I want it sooner than I'm ever likely to get it.

(Perhaps the things the conduct books have to say about imaginative engagement, romance novels, and women's delicate sensibilities are truer than I give them credit for -- it is dangerous to read them and expect them to come true.)