Night, all. Began slow reading Dickens’ Bleak House with #APStogether 48 days ago, turned last page today. Slow reads give you time to “read writing.” A great English mystery novel. Dickens visited EA Poe on his tour of the US. 1/2

"Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who's the junior partner? D?" said Mr. Skimpole brightly.

This reads even more comically in our post-psychedelic age. I wonder whether any writers played with this designation for Pounds, Shillings, and Pence and LSD? #APSTogether #BleakHouse

This repetition: "I proceed to other passages of my narrative." #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,' proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it [...]" There's a comic timing in the narrator's remark, since this is perhaps the 50th instance we've witnessed. #BleakHouse #APSTogether

Mr. Bucket again exhibits his powers of discrimination with his three distinct bows to the three figures in Sir Leicester's drawing room; another contrast to Tulkinghorn's "indifference," although Bucket is inheriting T.'s position. #BleakHouse #APSTogether #APublicSpace

Two small blue stuffed Ikea Blahaj sharks, a small stuffed hammerhead and a turquoise spotted stuffed whale shark, on a green couch with sin slanting in from the right, and copies of the books Mourning a Breast by XiXi with red details black and white Bleak House and a library copy of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, with yellow highlighted text and an image of Atlas with a big yellow clock on his shoulders and back

Here's some of what the sharks and I've got for #FridayReads Mourning a Breast by XiXi with #NYRBwomen25 Four Thousand Weeks by @oliverburkeman.com and Bleak House w #APSTogether it's a good reading week!

"If they can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's worth nothing to me." George refuses a lawyer's representation. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

There is something of "bluff" Mr. George in Dmitry Karamazov. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Something rather obvious, but just occurred to me: Bucket and Tulkinghorn represent diametrically opposed methods of delving into secrets. Tulkinghorn by inscrutable indifference; Bucket by versatile sociability, being all things to all men. #BleakHouse #APSTogether #APublicSpace

"You cannot catch old birds with chaff." Another saying new to me. While Dickens refers to the saying to disparage the fowls Mr. Bagnet has bought, might he also intend to praise further the wise "Old Girl"? #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

The "debilitated cousin" must be one source for the manner in which Monty Python's upper class twits speak. #APublicSpace #BleakHouse #APSTogether

"Even while he whistles his impetuosity away with the national anthem [...]" (!) #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"It surely is a strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of a civilized world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog." #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten." #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Skimpole: "In this family we are all children, and I am the youngest." [...] "So it is, and so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature to.'" Isaac Watts, from a hymn written for children. #BleakHouse #APSTogether #APublicSpace
www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/o5454-...

Mini Blahaj blue stuffed shark with 2 books on green couch: Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi and Bleak House by Dickens.

The sharks and I are reading Bleak House with #APSTogether and Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi with #NYRBWomen25 What are you reading? #FridayReads

Vholes's "official" cat is certainly his double as he waits patiently at the mousehole, but also seems to imply a "familiar" in so far as there's something diabolical about Vholes. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Mr. Vholes's desk is like a coffin inside a coffin. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"And she kept her word?"

What a grim question. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"I am not like the starling; I get out."

Is Skimpole referring to _A Sentimental Journey_? Or is there an older starling story underlying Sterne? #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am sure [...]"

Little pitchers have big ears. An old saying, but one I wasn't conscious of encountering before. #APublicSpace #APSTogether #BleakHouse

Esther acts out the discipline she imposes on herself: "What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has its own times and places in my story." #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Miss Summerson believed dead but alive. Lady Dedlock living dead. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Esther has kept her secret about Woodcourt about as well as she considered Ada and Richard had kept theirs before coming to confess to her. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when she was very mad indeed."

Esther responds to Miss Flite's assertion that titles of nobility are conferred for "knowledge, imagination, active humanity," or as Esther has said, "peaceful services." #BleakHouse #APSTogether

The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it! #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"[...] she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her." #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

"'George, hear me out!' says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. 'Old girl, go on!'" Mr. Bagnet takes care of phatic assertions like "Silence!" and leaves his message entirely to his wife, not knowing in advance what it will be, but that he will inevitably agree. #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

On an apple green couch, 2 stuffed Ikea Blah mini sharks, a tiny hammerhead, and a Jellycat whale shark with a copy of Absolute Wonder Woman vol 1 graphic novel, Bleak House by Dickens, and Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum by Sarah Hendrickx

What are you reading? The sharks and I are reading Bleak House w #APSTogether, just finished Absolute Wonder Woman, which I LOVED, with its big mythic witchy Circe vibes, and just started Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum by Sarah Hendrickx #FridayReads