Reading Rambo

SIR LEICESTER DEDLOCK. SIR LEICESTER DEDLOCK I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. SO MUCH. I downloaded this music vid off the internet AGES ago, and it has since disappeared. I re-upload it for you all, because omg who doesn't want to watch Lady Dedlock as played by Gillian Anderson doing things to a Madonna song? And I have waited the WHOLE readalong to post it, because SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING. But now you'll all know what's going on in it!! Because you've made it the whole way! So sit back, try to identify scenes, and feel Feels. HURRAY VIDEO. Honestly, if you've made it through Bleak House , I am immensely proud of you. It's so good, but it's so long. REJOICING TIME. Where—what to—THERE'S SO MUCH IN THE LAST SECTION. I mean. There's so much in the whole book, but there's so much we haven't talked about! Bucket and Tulkinghorn are parallels! Look at how Tulkinghorn refers to Lady Dedlock as "this woman" and Bucket allllways keeps...

Mysteries! Revelations! French people! why weren't YOU just in the book No, I think we all know that Mademoiselle Hortense is played by Eva Green.  PARFAIT I knew there was some reason I loved Inspector Bucket. And he was being so unfair to George! But then — bam. He is amazing. Super-amazing. And considerate of Sir Leicester (who...omg, nope). And stuffs a sheet in his wife's mouth, which — ok, look, that's hilarious and I feel like their marriage is the best and I wish they'd just adopt Charley and her siblings and start a family detective agency. And then Charley could marry REMEMBER HIM? Okay, but first back to Sir Leicester, because It is she whom he has loved, admired, honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels.[...] And ev...

First of all, 19th century, you're fucked up if your middle class would "consider the poor girl tarnished by having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of [Lady Dedlock's] great and distinguished" patronage. Fucked. Up. "Oh no, this woman had a baby out of wedlock before she got married. Yeah, I know she's super-awesome and respected now, but WHAT you were in her house for five minutes? GET. OUT. You are hereby TARNISHED, like an old spoon." Let's not even get into Tulkinghorn basically saying "You're a slut and so I get to treat you how I want," because I'll get all ragepants about it. Life and Lady Dedlock Now. Chapters 43 and 44. Wtf. Let's not really get into Mr Jarndyce's motives, because really he's just being incredibly kind here, especially given Esther's most recent revelation. She said she was going to live with Richard and Ada, but how well is THAT going to turn out? And onc...

I can't focus on anything in this section but Esther's fever dreams and Lady Dedlock's revelation to her. Esther suddenly falls ill with smallpox. In her feverish state, the things she's tried so hard to repress come forward:  "While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became confused with one another, distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile them." Our awesome narrator has grown up without a mother — without even a mother FIGURE since Miss Barbary and Miss Rachael were such bucket trolls to her — and she instead becomes a mother to everyone around her. This confuses her actual role in life. She never allows herself to go through the adolescent phase -- she suddenly goes from being a child to an older adult (something also suffered...

SO MUCH HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN THIS BOOK. Points I would like to make: - I like Mr Gridley muchly. And am sad about his end. LET HIM GO BACK TO THREATENING LAWYERS - I forgot how many people die in this book. There're just corpses strewn everywhere. (Nemo, Jenny's baby, Mr Gridley, Tom Jarndyce, Coavinses, Miss Barbary, Krook, SO FAR) - Richard drives me up the wall, even though I super-relate to him and his cheerful attitude and bouncing around of interests. Richard and Esther - I want Mr George to just settle down and be happy. I will tell all my friends to patronize his shooting gallery. - Mr and Mrs Bagnet have the only healthy marriage in the book. Discuss. - Sir Leicester is really wonderful in his own way, and it makes me so happy that while Dickens didn't like the upper classes and barely makes an attempt to write about them beyond caricature, he makes Sir Leicester something of a complex human being. A complex human being who very, very muc...

Ah, second week! Where we added to the exposition with more exposition, but also some things happened! Some of you are getting more invested, and also discovering the payoff of sticking with Dickens, because after you meet the first 50 characters, later you hear about one of them in a sideways sort of way and go "Oh! oh!!" and it's all very exciting. So exciting So Esther as a revision of Jane Eyre has been mentioned. And why not. It was published in 1847, Bleak House was published in 1852-3. The heroines have remarkably similar backgrounds. Sure, Dickens said he'd never read Jane Eyre , but I think we all know rule 1 is In Lisa Jadwin's "'Caricatured, not faithfully rendered': Bleak House as a Revision of Jane Eyre," she says that between 1849 and 1853 "Dickens devoted considerable space in Household Words and in his letters to putting feminists in their domestic place." I'm willing to grant that Dickens wrote Esthe...

This book. THIS BOOK. Is what started me on Dickens. I hated him. HATED. And then when I was 18, my professor assigned it and Bleak House became one of my favorite books of all time, and its author the biggest love-hate relationship of my life. Let the words of Joan Jett guide our hearts Bleak House is a massive undertaking. Immediately before it, he published the fairly autobiographical and still widely read David Copperfield , but before THAT you had his road trip novels, none of which had much structure, and Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son , which could be excellent, but I haven't read them yet, so I don't know. Also no one talks about them, so, whatever. Bleak House . This enormous mass of invective against Chancery, which, let's hope, contributed to the passing of the Common Law Procedure Act of 1854 ( Bleak House was written 1852-3), which "eliminated many of the lengthy delays" associated with the Court of Chancery. This book is huge an...

The Bleak House readalong's first post is in ONE WEEK. ONE WEEK TO READ ELEVEN CHAPTERS. IT CAN BE DONE.  That's less than two chapters reading a day, suckahs. You put this off til the last second and you're gonna miss some damn spiffy sentences. THIS IS DICKENS'S BEST BOOK; THAT IS WHY WE ARE READING IT. Don't treat it like some lameass sophomore year English assignment. What I will be saying to all of your excuses ADVICE. Would be to create a list of characters. There are a MILLION characters in this book, and if you have problems keeping people straight, make a list. Write things like "Tulkinghorn - Dedlocks' lawyer; wears breeches in 1852 -- weirdo." (he is) Speaking of breeches, I love the pants off this book. It is awesome. But also I haven't read it all the way through since I was 18. So I'm quite excited about this readalong. QUITE. IT'S GOING TO BE SO RAD, YOU GUYS So write down which characters you like, what y...

THE TIME HAS COME. Some of you have not read Bleak House . Which is a silly state of affairs, because it is the greatest. SO. In the dreary month of February (and also half of March), we shall read (or re-read) Charles Dickens's best novel! And it will be the funnest and full of overly emotional GIFs and OH how excited I am. Posts are on Tuesdays and start February 4th. We'll skip intro posts and just jump right in with a schedule I will post later in the month, possibly here.  SIGN-UP BELOW; BE THERE OR BE SQUARE THIS IS GOING TO BE SUPER-FUN BECAUSE I LOVE THIS BOOK MORE THAN CHIPMUNKS LOVE RAISINS. February 4th - Chapters I through XI February 11th - Chapters XII through XXI February 18th - Chapters XXII through XXXII February 25th - Chapters XXXIII through XXXIX March 4th - Chapters XL through XLVIII March 11th - Chapters XLIX through LV March 18th - LVI through LXVII