i have very definitely outgrown winterson. i thought lighthouse keeping might be one way of returning to her books after all this time, and as i had no particular book in mind when i was at the victoria street library (i don't like calling it central library; central library is the stamford road one!!) i thought why not it's a winterson and i haven't read it. but i was flatly unimpressed by it, even bored, and probably it is only out of loyalty that i finished it. her early books are much better, and i was also younger back then, but now - or by the time of the powerbook, she seemed, and now only seems to me lightweight, without any real intellectual purchase on any subject. even her style, which i had so admired 8 years ago, seems to have slipped. i'd like to see her write more short stories and essays instead of novels - she hasn't written many of those, and i feel i'd prefer her in those - where her lightness would work to her advantage.