Oh me too, with the boarding school, class lists, timetables, floor plans, grounds plans, elaborate uniform designs for every cirumstance, etc etc.

I also skimmed the Gondal bits for the first several times I read PR. It took me ages to accept that they revealed something more about the characters - and this was as an adult that I was reading it. I still find it hard even now to really enjoy those sections, although I can see how they do reveal interesting things. But I still prefer the non-Gondal sections. I'd never heard of Gondal/Angrie, and I didn't know much about the Brontes, either, so I was quite glad for that bit of introduction to it, or I'd have wondered what it was all about, and why it seemed to be someting so controversial for Nicola. I don't think it would have occurred to me that role-playing could be negative, nor really that people could get so seriously into it as it sounds like the Brontes (and perhaps some of the Marlows) did. I probably tended to assume that everyone's imaginary worlds were like mine, soemthing that was entirely deliberately created, and which I always knew was very separate from the 'real world'.