I have got to page 652 in C and there are only 741, what shall I do when it’s finished, I really never will read any more beastly books they are only an extra complication to one’s pathetic life.

~ Deborah Cavendish, later the Duchess of Devonshire, in a 1944 letter to her sister Nancy Mitford.

Oh Debo. Girl. Don’t I know it? Books – they are an absolutely beastly complication to one’s pathetic life, and yet… we can’t stop reading them. Can we.