The Scarlet Letter - Introductory

I've been meaning to read this for a long time - I read it once in high school, but I want to try and read it for enjoyment. I didn't get much out of it last time. My friend Miss Roxie read it last year with her daughter, and she made it sound interesting.

This will a book I take to bed, so I'll mostly be reading whatever I feel like before I fall asleep - no schedule, and it may be slow going. I won't be blogging or summarizing or anything, I just thought this was interesting - I found this in the introductory:

"It is a little remarkable, that . . . when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But--as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience--it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil."

Nathaniel Hawthorne thinks like a blogger. ;)