In late January and into early February I did a little research. Yeah, in the modern age a half hour with Google counts as “a little research” ;) OK, it was more than a half of an hour. Anyway, using several searches such as “what is the best Charles Dickens novel”, I discovered that the book that topped the most lists was Bleak House. Not just that, several people were of the opinion that to understand Charles Dickens you needed to understand Bleak House, that it was the key.
Sounds great, right? I thought so, and so did Yvette Prior. The two of us picked Bleak House for our 2022 Dickens challenge. (Last year was Little Dorrit).
Join us?
We are planning on having a series of posts on or around the 9th of June. Actually, I plan on a series of posts that week, perhaps from Sunday, June 5 to Saturday, June 11.
Not only are Yvette and myself going to do a series of posts, we want others to get involved. We would, of course, love to have others do Bleak House posts themselves, but also encourage discussion on our posts. As an incentive, we are going to put the names of the participants into a drawing for an Amazon gift certificate so you can buy more Dickens’ books. OK, just more books, they don’t have to be Dickens… ;)
This is a long book so you need to get a head start! And I will let you know right now that, unlike last year when I waited for the last minute, I have already finished reading Bleak House! So go get your copy now! No money for books until you win that gift card? You can get a free version here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1023
There have been a few posts about this and I plan on at least one more, as does Yvette. Here they are so far:
Yvette’s opening post
My opening post
Yvette’s reminder post (includes other material)
It’s only a little more than two months away, start reading now ;)
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Hi T! this post was great – just the right length and love your little tease (No money for books until you win that gift card? ) and then providing the link.
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I am still so proud of you for finishing. I am slowly turning pages – :) but not even half way through.
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:)
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Thanks, Y! Right, no excuses for not at least starting ;) When I read a few pages at a time I often hit a point where I just have to sit down and read through it, and I had reached that point. I’m glad I did! And I wrote 5 posts – I think I’ll do a brief intro and a short post to tie it all up, so run from Sunday through Saturday.
Keep going! You’ll make it through.
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Thanks for the encouragement – even though I had to pause today and might not get back to it til next weekend –
And I can’t wait to finish to compare thoughts
😊☀️☀️☀️
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It was after taking a few days off of reading that I forced myself to sit down with it – “force” is a strong word, but pretty close, though once I did start seriously reading, I couldn’t stop!
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That is good to know – that you couldn’t stop once you got momentum
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What a fun idea, I love books I have a few hundred pretty much all read, Just a little too much on at the moment to do much reading. I hope a lot of people join in, such a awesome blog community.
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Thanks! We only had a few read and join in last year, so hopefully there are more this year :)
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I think it’s a lovely project, Trent and Yvette.
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Thanks, Miriam. it was a lot of fun last year, and hopefully we’ll get more people involved this year.
Thinking of that, what does your TBR pile look like? Any room for a huge Dickens book? lol
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I do have a big pile, Trent, but let me check your link later on the day. What do I do to be involved?
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The best way to get involved would be to put up a post about the book during the week and link back to master post Yvette or I will put up at the start. Last year we only had a couple of people that put up their own posts, though one person did a fabulous job, full or art and ideas.
After that, the best way to get involved would be discussion on the posts we put up. There actually was a lot of discussion last year, though most of it centered on why people didn’t like to read Dickens, but a few did stay more on the topic of the book, Little Dorrit.
As we get closer we will try to organize it a little better – last year we did almost no organization – and hopefully make it easier for people to participate.
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Hi Miriam – no pressure – but we would love to have you join us. And as Trent noted, just joining in the discussions will include you as you joining in.
:)
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