I bypassed this a couple of times at the library as I have never read "Middlemarch", but then I cheated and watched the BBC miniseries, which was swell. So I thought I could give this a go. I was expecting that a book about how a much-loved-much reread novel has affected one's life would be, well, a lot more fun than this was. Humorous, even. Nope. This was, well, I'm not really sure. A mini-biography of George Eliot, rather dryly written, some Cliff Notes-y stuff about the novel itself, and once in a while a bit about herself which never amounted to much more than an outline....I would think from the premise that you would really feel like you knew her after reading this, but I don't at all. Her descriptions of traveling in Eliot's footsteps should have been a lot more interesting then they were, but her writing style is just so....lacking in sparkle? that the whole thing ended up being a bit of a slog. I knew very little about George Eliot and I did learn from this, so I don't regret reading it, but I am not going to urge it on anyone, either. (I did order "Middlemarch" from B & N yesterday....)