So, after several days in the grips of stomach flu I have this to report:

I have been making my way, roughly in tandem, through two book club reads, Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and Buchi Emecheta's "The Joys of Motherhood." The dual experience of these books (I am about halfway through each) has taught me two important life lessons:

1) Men are bad.
2) Marriage is a blight on the lives of women.

Oh, and perhaps a third, which may in fact negate the other two:

3) I am desperately glad to be living in 21st C Connecticut.

Perhaps not the most admirable of conclusions. More later...