Oh, Gum, of course you will not be held accountable for damage to my keyboard (it's a laptop), and I do try to keep it at a distance while eating. This poor old computer MUST hold together because although it's old and slow, it has the only way for me to connect to work through the old system. I don't know what I'll do when it finally gives up the ghost.
Don't spoil the book for yourself, but it does seem to have an intro. by Pearl which will be interesting to Joan P since, as she said, the book won't be published in this country until later this year. I think you Aussies are privileged folk.
I understand your standoffishness to Dickens because my daughter is the same way. Then she saw the PBS program on Little Dorrit and the other two they did and said, "Hey this Dickens is pretty good." If she can be won over, anyone can.
The Dickens novel that I've always thought it would be fun to do here is Bleak House, which despite the gloomy title, is I think, his best. He's very experimental in that novel, using a woman--Esther Summerson--to narrate nearly a quarter of the book. He also does some interesting things with present tense. Stylistically, he was ahead of his time. Bleak House was also a Masterpiece Theater series here, and it was very good, but it omitted so much of the novel.
It's the height of summer here, heat and humidity (though not as bad as most summers), shorts, and lots of outdoor activity. In June it rained and rained, to the point where my basement had flooding nearly every time--and now we badly need rain. The trees are all fine, but the grass and little plants are thirsty.
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