Every time we finish a readalong, The Doors "This is the End" plays in my head the whole time I'm writing my final post. It's very distracting, especially because for most of my young life I was pretty sure that Val Kilmer was Jim Morrison and that is a very handsome movie poster, I tell you what. Have I mentioned this before? Possibly.
Anyway. Part of the reason I was behind most of the readalong is that I was listening to the audiobook, which is approximately 548 hours long. I enjoy audiobooks immensely because they allow me to pursue two hobbies at once (reading and knitting, or reading and spinning, or reading and eating...), but they do slow down my Goodreads challenge. Last night I went to bed with 3 chapters (two hours!) left, so I gave in and read the last ~50 pages in the paperback that Amanda sent me for our Secret Santa, and I am SO glad I did because the afterword to this edition is delightful. Elizabeth McCracken is a Dickens fangirl whose first sentence to her afterword apologizes to the reader for encountering an afterword at all following roughly 1000 pages of novel.
Not to mention that the splash page on her website is delightful.
Salute the McCracken.
How are we feeling now that mostly everyone we didn't like ::cough Skimpole cough:: and a few people we did - POOR JO - are dead?
They had nothing to do with it.
I had a shouty moment when Esther turned Woodcourt down and I was prepared to be Very Upset Indeed, but Jarndyce made the right decision - some might say unlike Dickens himself later in life - and while I dislike the idea that Esther was his to reward Woodcourt with, I support the final outcome of Esther being happy and loved for who she is.
You know who never calls Esther "Dame Durden"? Woodcourt.
We're gonna circle back to the birdcage theme for a second - remember that one from way back when? - to just mention that Miss Flyte names all her birds and probably has to recite them in order every night like Arya Stark, and with all the Ashes and Penitences and Wards in Jarndyces, she has a bird named Spinach. Bless you, Miss Flyte.
And bless YOU, Charles Dickens, on behalf of all the Volumnias of the world, with our spare little drops and feeble prismatic twinkling. You rapscallion, you brimstone bogtrotter, you brilliant and ginormous tool.
It's not your fault that sometimes in my head I get you mixed up with Charles Darwin.
Against all odds, the Oscars Movie Party on Saturday, the Oscars themselves on Sunday, and a dear friend's breakup today which necessitated an hour-and-a-half phone call to get all the details and express an appropriate amount of "what the fuck is that guy's problem?!?," I have caught up on Bleak House you guys.
And boy am I glad I did, because what the what is going on right now? NICE WORK ALICE in choosing where we've been ending up.
Until the fateful lack of clocks warning Tulkinghorn about his impending doom,
way to go, pal...
I spent most of this week's chapters thinking about who in this story are the villains and who are the heroes. Which ones are the worst/best, respectively? This ended up being mostly made up of a list of Who I Like Best in descending order. Dickens is doing an admirable job of directing our attention toward Ada and Richard, who at the outset seem to be the heroes of the piece. Ada is obviously the ingenue and Richard (can I call him Dick? Yes let's do) is the person who thinks he loves her so he must be the hero, right?
No. Primarily because we I don't like Ada in any role except Esther's darling and that Dick is... pigheaded and stupid, shall we say. I submit to you instead that the true heroes of the piece are Esther and Alan (Allan? I'm listening to the audiobook). While I know in my Tumblr-addled soul that Esther and Ada need to end up together, I was pleased by Alan comforting Esther about her looks when no one has done that yet areyoufuckingkiddingme?!?
Villain: Harold Skimpole.
For I am such a child, don't you see. AND CHILDREN CAN'T BE TRUSTED.
Lord he's just so awful and managed to snow everyone into believing him and I'm screaming internally like Leo at the Oscars (don't get me started but also Glenn Close and Gary Oldman have also not won Oscars so a little perspective please tumblr). Arrrggghhhhh.
And then there's Jo and I couldn't help but picture Dickens chuckling to himself about how affecting this death scene will be and how the ladies would just cry buckets of tears over poor Jo and his caaaaaa-*sniffle*-aaart.
There's a lot of death in this book, you guys. At least Lady Dedlock's secret is safe! Who shot Tulkinghorn? It definitely wasn't me, although I did harbor a suspicion that Tulkinghorn had a frisson for our Lady.
Poor Esther. I want to shake her and yell that NOTHING in this book is her fault and WHERE ARE THE ACTUAL ADULTS this book is peopled by children much like Frozen (also don't get me started). And then I will stride around London and Chesney Wold and administer slaps. To everyone. Asking Esther to marry you, indeed. BAH.
Well well well. Here we are in week FOUR, which if you all recall was originally when we were supposed to be completely finished with this amazing Bleak House readalong.
I have a few things I'd like to discuss. Firstly, as much as I like Charley and want her to have a good life, I'm really supremely unhappy that it was Esther who got the ugly end of whatever mysterious illness they both came down with. Did she really deserve that, Dickens? No she did not. So why does it happen to her? I don't think necessarily that Dickens would have been on board with our working "so Woodcourt wouldn't love her and she would be free to live with Ada for the rest of her life" theory. But you never know.
(Also, 1850's germ theory: the era of We Haven't Quite Figured This Out, Have We?)
And then Boythorn is super-awesome and offers Esther his house to rattle around in, which is not at all a plot device to get Esther closer to Lady Dedlock, nosiree. It's just him being cheerful and nice and not at all creepy like the other jolly fat guy who likes animals.
Plot twist!
So last week I was really behind and missed the spontaneous combustion bit, and Alice and I discussed it yesterday and there's the moment where Guppy and Weevil nee Jobling are falling all over themselves to get out of Krook's room, and I couldn't stop picturing them as these two:
Guppy and Jobling, respectively.
which led to a conversation about dream casting for Bleak House. Shall we have at it to cover up that I'm STILL three chapters behind? YES LET'S DO.
Can we talk about the SUPREMELY DISMAL parenting going on in this book? I am fairly sure that it's on purpose, given Dickens's first examples of motherhood are 1) the horrible godmother/aunt 2) Mrs. Jellyby and 3) Mrs. Pardiggle.
And then we have Mr. Turveydrop, whose deportment is the envy of us all I am sure, but sir,
Although while he's a trial to everyone around him and will expect Caddy and Prince to wait on him hand and foot until he expires in a cloud of lavender water, he's not as emotionally manipulative as the horrid Mrs. Jellyby being snide and ridiculous and so dismissive of her daughter and the things she wants. PARENTING, you guys. I know it's not easy but seriously, get your shit together. And you, Rick. Yeesh.
Mrs Rachel from back-in-the-day is Mrs. Chadband? Ugh he is so gross and his utterly nonsensical "sermons" give me the giggles.
"When this young heathen now among us - who is now, my friends, asleep..."
Hah. But I love how Dickens just throws the detail of the Chadbands in as if it's not important - she just walks up in the middle of an unrelated chapter and is all, "hey, remember me? I made your childhood a living hell. Also I married a guy you don't yet know you hate. Peace."
I'm sure that won't come back around later. Anyway, the bird imagery continues, have you noticed? And Hortense comes in and begs Esther for a job but does it in a very interesting manner. The kind of manner where she promises to do anything... she's very hot-blooded being from France, you know... she'll take care of Esther better than anyone could ever...
Sometimes you finish a book that was ohhhhhkay and you feel like all the good books were written in the past, and you're so woebegone that you ignore the somewhat glaring inconsistency that by definition ALL published books were written in the past.
"Books today," you think, "are just not what they used to be. I'm going to go back to classics and books with dragons on the covers.*"
And then you feel very smug with yourself and pick up this slim novel by Catherynne M. Valente, promising yourself that it's nothing but Brontes and Dickens and Collins after this because at least they weren't writing to be able to sell movie rights. This is when Valente - who is a year younger than you, what have you been doing with your life?!? - takes you by your smug nose and teaches an object lesson in Creative Writing.
Chapter 1: Exuent in a Rowboat, Pursued by Crows
Valente's imagination should be a national treasure. Her work is full of the details that make Oz and Wonderland such indelible places.
"Once upon a time, a girl named September had a secret."
This is the second book in the The Girl Who series, which I'm sure has a better, more proper name but who cares about that. The point is, in theory you've already read the first book or at least heard its title, which is The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making. Thus it is not a spoiler to tell you that September's secret is that she has been to Fairyland before, and it's not much of a spoiler to tell you that - much like the rest of us would if we had been September - she spent a large portion of her time thinking about how to get back.
"Now, secrets are delicate things. They can fill you up with sweetness and leave you like a cat who has found a particularly fat sparrow to eat and did not get clawed or bitten even once while she was about it."
Nice job, Puss.
But they can also get stuck inside you, and very slowly boil up your bones for their bitter soup. So we may be very glad that September had the better of her secret...
Those are some Trufax (TM), you guys, and it's only page 1. Observe page 180, if you please:
Wit laughed, which for a crow is a loud, rough sound. Crows look down a bit on birds that make pretty, trilling sounds. Pandering to humans, they say. Just shameless.
I gobbled this book up and ordered the third one from the library, tout de suite.
10.5 out of 11 Mazes that wouldn't be caught dead without a minotaur. It's not done!
*Can we please have a moment of silence for Anne McCaffrey, without whom I would probably not be here - either as a writer or as a reader of books. Pern is a much beloved mark on my soul, and if the future doesn't bring me a fire lizard then what, I ask you, is science even for?
Well, here we are in the first week of the #BleakAlong and I've managed to make it through ALL the reading!
This will not last, so I intend to celebrate while I can.
Okay, so far this book is about contrasts, yes? There's the excruciatingly obvious Mrs. Pardiggle vs. Mrs. Jellyby, whose husbands should absolutely have dinner together, Esther. And then there's Chetney Wold vs. Bleak House, and the different areas of London, and how the Chancery differs from the real world...
But there are some things I HAVE to talk to you about: are we established and all on board that Esther and Ada are as queer as a three-dollar bill? Poor Mr. Guppy and his awkward proposal.
GOOD; more on that later.
But first I want to talk about the wallpapers in this book. Ada's bedroom at Bleak House is full of flowered things - the wallpaper, the upholstery, everything. Is it because she is Virgin in this tale, Mr. Dickens? No need to whack us over the head with that one. Then there's Esther's room, with the hard working people on the walls, making hay and whatnot, because she'll be the housekeeper you see. Without any training I might add - Dickens, that's a stretch. But the description of the sitting room is what made me sit up (hah) and take notice. It's papered with birds. Birds, who represent freedom and innocence, but whose song - like the birds of the mad old lady at Crook's shop - is silenced, in the case of this room, forever.. Is this a hint to us that the Jarndyce judgement will never come down, or that it might not be everything it's cracked up to be once Chancery has its way?
Close readings are the best.
Are you as weirded out by Boythorn as I am? Alice pointed out that Bleak House predates The Woman in White, but it doesn't change the fact that I met Count Fosco first and therefore will never again fully trust a giant, overblown man who has a strange way with the beasts of the field. And I submit to you, my friends, that Wilkie thought there was something creepy about it too, which could be why the two characters resemble each other.
The exception that proves the rule.
There's so much stuff in here, you guys! We could do a week per chapter and I'd STILL fill up 2 pages of notes.
Welcome, one and all, to our celebration-lette of everything we love about spending the whole day in our pajamas tweeting reading and eating large amounts of tiny foods! Except it's not the whole day because that's too taxing, so let's just do 8 hours, shall we? Everyone gets one nap. Maybe two.
Okay, three.
SO, what are you eating? Show me your minifoods! Here's what I've got so far:
Plus some mini-carrots but who cares about vegetables on Minithon Day?
Except that it's 8am on a Saturday after I put in a Very Serious Week at work, so my food right now consists of a cup of coffee - the size of which has absolutely zero to do with smallness.
Caffeinate first. Eat later. Everyone lives.
And then there are my books! To be frank, I've been tearing my way through Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series and it's difficult to come up with a way in which these ~700 page books about an orphan-turned-master-thief are mini. What's that you ask? Was he a child mini-human when the series began?
Nailed it.
UPDATE THE FIRST:
We made it through the first tradition of the Minithon, which is spending the first 1-2 hours talking on the internet about how we're not reading yet and (for those of us in earlier time zones) sucking down caffeine until our humanity emerges.
I got up from my chair about an hour ago to grab some crackers and chocolate-covered toffee popcorn (damn you Trader Joes...) and put my flannel sheets in the wash to keep myself from napping, which turned out to be a genius move. I'm prissy civilized about where I sleep, so no napping in a bed without sheets or on the couch for me unless shit is DIRE.
Round about 10am CA time, I poured myself some more coffee and a bowl of cereal, then settled down to Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (book 3 of the Gentlemen Bastards series). Back in 2010, I charged through the first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, like a knight winning a joust, not knowing that it was going to be a series. Imagine my delight when, four years later, I discovered that TWO MORE BOOKS had been published and I'd forgotten enough of the details to make a re-read of book 1 a requirement.
So, that's what I'm doing right now. I've got about 150 pages to go, so I may not get anything else started this 'Thon, but that's juuuust fine with me.
What are you gals up to? What have you eaten? I'm considering going downstairs to heat the oven and eat some of those mini chicken tamalitos...
UPDATE THE SECOND:
We are finished with the Third Ever Minithon and I'm the LAST person to update because directly after my first update I did indeed make chicken tamalitos and some other mini-foods and then took a shower and then made my bed because my sheets were dry and crashed. the. fuck. out.
Now I am up and make-upped and my BFF will be here shortly and we're going to meet our other BFF for dinner on a gift certificate so today, over all, will be a Banner Day.
Thank you ALL for joining me in this best of excuses to read and eat all day! Let's do it again in the summer, ok?
Any time, Bruce.
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