Thank you all again for your words of sympathy. They mean a lot to my husband and me.

In a desperate attempt to distract myself, I created an account at a new online service called BookGlutton. BG allows you to read books online with others, leave comments about the book, and chat with others who are reading the same book in real time.

Accounts are free. The books contained there are limited, I believe, to those out of copyright, but I thought that BookGlutton could be used by those of us who need a little encouragement to try reading something new and different.

With that thought in mind, I set up a Katie Mac Reading Group for folks who want to join me in reading some of the classics. I really would love to go through Ann Radcliffe's books, but they don't have them included in their offerings (although I suppose I could upload a version from Gutenberg). I did suggest they get them in, so hopefully they'll do that. Until that time, I decided that I would read another old classic Gothic novel, Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole.

If you'd like to join BookGlutton and read the book with me, you can find me at http://www.bookglutton.com/glutton/KatieMac.html and the book group at http://www.bookglutton.com/bookgroup/show/id/156.

It should be a fun way to try something new/different.