Next

- Next Dickens binge-

After reading all my Anne Tyler, Stella Gibbons, Larry McMurtry, Richard Russo, etc. favorites too many times to start in on them again, I desperately downloaded Charles Dickens's Bleak House from Project Gutenberg without much hope.

I've picked up the book pictured here a few times and put it back down. I thought it looked boring and full of old English language that wouldn't let me be immersed in the story.

Man, was I surprised to find out how compelling Bleak House is, and a twisting mystery to boot. In over 800 some-odd pages, it never let up, and, like any good book, I was sad to see it come to an end.

So I started in on Great Expectations and found it to be the same way. This is a book I feel I should have read a long time ago, at least so I could understand pop culture references to Miss Havisham.

About halfway through Bleak House, I noticed a striking similarity in it to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. Both feature a man seeking a fortune due him and the frustrations he endures that ruin his health and mind. I think Fitzgerald's writings are gloomier and sort of depressing to read. I don't know, maybe I need to re-read that to come to a better comparison of the two. I remember reading Fitzgerald's books with the notion of something to be gotten through, like homework, whereas Dickens's make me yearn for the next word.

I try not to read anything much below 320-350 pages to keep from having to find a new book sooner, but these huge Dickensian tomes keep me occupied longer, and I don't have the anxiety of finding the next book so often.

Now I'm going to meet Nicholas Nickleby and see what he's gotten up to.