Tipping the Velvet and tipping over my ominously large pile of textbooks

I'm reading a rather beautifully written novel at the moment by Sarah Waters, called "Tipping the Velvet", which was turned into a three-part film by the BBC a few years ago. It's a beautifully-written, moving, often humorous book about the peculiar life of one Nan Astley. It's a gender-bending adventure about love, heartache, lesbians, prostitutes, rent-boys, kings and queens and more heartache. It was Waters's first novel; since then she has written "Fingersmith" (on the ABC recently) and "Affinity". You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll squirm, you'll wish you had a girlfriend. Read "Tipping the Velvet" now, or rather, once I'm done with it.