Reading Logs catch up

As a palate cleanser I've just finished Nice Work for probably the fifth time. It's a quick way to feel clever as it references so many things without ever slackening the fast and funny pace. Having watched the BBC version of North and South, I was aware of many more linkages between the two books than the last time I read it (NW that is). Both of the main characters are introduced with many faults and yet they both come out of it as likable people though be warned that the ending is not the fairy tale of the Mrs Gaskell Novel. I do wish the BBC would show their version of Nice Work; it's so long since I saw it that the Warren Clarke of my mind is too old and chubby to play Vic who from the book seems a slim and slight figure and therefore more plausible as squire to Haydn Gwynne.

I jettisoned A Devil's Chaplain a couple of chapters from the end because it was just too stodgy after the lightness of Dawkins' tributes to Douglas Adams. However to keep up the meaningful stuff I have started dipping into Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams again. To start this has a wonderful cover in Ransom-Note style. Its title story is a beautiful, syrupy and dark tale of a secretary who works in the Psychiatric out-patients department of an American Hospital where she secretly copies and reads the dream books going back to when the department opened. Without spoiling things, I can say that I do think that it might have been in Will Self's mind when he wrote Ward 9. The other stories of Johnny Panic have an air of twisted domesticity, being written often for Women's magazines and therefore having to be far-removed from the dark stuff of Plath's later poems. But still these dark influences come through the surface gloss, either by being part of the beautifully-written prose or because of my own association with the events of Plath's life. Short dip-in stories they are, brilliant for filling up gaps.

I'm just not sure what serious book to pick up next. Suggestions please.