Day Twenty-Eight

4/28

The Book: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

ISBN: 978-1-59308-311-3

Suggested By: Rebecca Mitchell

Where: Home

When: 9:30-10P

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 646 - 701 (55)

The Lead In: So I am in my final Realism class tonight and I mention to Dr. Mitchell that I am reading Bleak House, the book she put on the list, and she says, “Oh? Well, I figured you would love it because of Kafka.” Apparently Kafka loved it. 

The 411 on the 55: Esther discovers that Ada has gone behind her back and married Richard. Not too surprising. Esther is a little slow on the uptake sometimes.

Mr. Bucket begins digging into the murder and through several long-winded speeches nails his culprit, the french maid. I enjoyed this part of the book. Mr. Bucket is highly amusing. And his speeches were good times. Of course, the French woman did it, with her ridiculous accent and hilarious lines, the perfect murderer

Line of the Day: Two awesome lines today: 1)  “Now, What’s up?” pg 683,

2) “When I went up-stairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise, and told her all about it. pg 691

The Fact on the Fiction: The novels of Charles Dickens were translated into German shortly after their English publication. They were very popular. Franz Kafka in the main admired Dickens’ writing. This admiration shows through in Kafka’s own novels, themselves written in German. On reading The Trial or The Castle one is struck by parallels with Charles Dickens’ novels, particularly Bleak House. David Wheldon This is a rather good article, though a bit long.