“Bleak House” by Charles Dickens, again
Hey, everyone, my friend Amy at New Century Reading is doing a readalong of Bleak House by Dickens, using the same chapters he did when he wrote it, so one serial section a week, which is about 50 pages or so.
I started a readalong earlier this year and didn’t love it though I did love Bleak House, and am excited to give it another go.
Serial 1 is chapters 1 through 4. We meet London:
As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flecks of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes–gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
There’s an endless court case, a mysterious orphan, a crazy old lady, a beautiful woman with a past… Oh, I look forward to finding out more!
November 1st, 2012 at 3:21 pm
That opening just floored me. You can have “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I’ll take the opening to Bleak House over that.