Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! (Bleak House Challenge)

HI Readers, Today (Feb 7th) is author Charles Dickens birthday.

Trent and I were discussing the Charles Dickens book challenge we did last year – we read Little Dorrit and invited others to join us – it was so much fun.
It was a highlight of my year because the enrichment from reading a book with some blog friends, a very informal activity, was a nice lift! 

Invitation:

We thought it would be good fun if others joined us while reading Bleak House sometime this spring. 

If you want to read the Bleak House book and then share a post about it, on or around June 9, which is the date of Dickens’ death – please join us. You can also read it and just join in the June posts that we make – Because we are also raffling off another Amazon gift card this year and will pull names from all who participate!

Trent’s 2022 post is here 

Use this hashtag if you join: #Dickenschallenge

if you want a free copy of the e-book – Gutenberg has it here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1023

Need more incentive to join in? If you are a writer, you know that reading other authors can help you grow and give you ideas. Even if you are not a writer, everyone can benefit from human stories – and all the more when we read from such a special author like Charles Dickens. He was an author that honed his craft (meaning he became masterful with his words and story elements – raw talent and gifts combined with labor). His social intelligence, advocator side, and deep understanding of human behavior is what floods the pages when he develops characters and gives the reader much to enjoy and grow with.

Dickens has inspired me as his characters come to life because they are infused by traits from people he has met in the course of life.
The courts and legal system and domestic fiction of Bleak House can be quite a journey to go on!  We are given deep insights about the courts of the day along with sub plots as this was released in a series of 20 installments from 1852-1854.

Also – please know this story is not all bleak and heavy! It is a story about social class and personal circumstance. It is a story about the courts, family, and choice with all the richness of mid 1800 life amidst a foggy London setting.

Links for more Dickens

1) Go here for an old Priorhouse Post with a snippet from A Christmas Carol

2) Delancey Place (here) has featured Dickens many times, and this one here  is great 

3) This blog here has a current Great expectations weekly read-a-lo

4) A student tribute blog to Dickens is here

5) This blog here has some nice posts on the Victorian Era social problems and the book Bleak House (1853).

6) Podcast here from the online reading group Defining Digital Dickens. I think this could have used some editing, but I guess this is how podcasts are – raw and unedited? But it is just fun to know that there was a study group of bloggers and critics exploring Dickens’s last completed novel, ‘Our Mutual Friend’.

7) 12 facts about Dickens at this blog here – with this fact #3 relating to Little Dorrit

8) On Dickens’ b-day in 2013, this blog here shared about the doggy gift for Dickens.

9) Linda (here) shared that her friend and fellow blogger, Joni, has written about Dickens’ a few times and here is one of the posts: https://thehomeplaceweb.com/2019/12/12/the-literary-salon-the-manwho-invented-christmas/

10) Last year’s June posts for Little Dorrit challenge:

Trent: https://trentsworld.blog/2021/06/14/final-thoughts-on-little-dorrit/

Prior: https://priorhouse.blog/2021/06/14/little-dorrit-recap-dickenschallenge-2021/

11) Shout Out to the awesome Derrick Knight who shared so much Dickens last year – like this one:

-https://derrickjknight.com/2021/01/19/the-father-of-the-marshalsea/

12) Retirement Reflections had a great post about A Christmas Carol (here) with Ten Reasons to Love a Christmas Carol

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Have you already read Bleak House? Or have you seen a movie rendition of it?
Care to join us?

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