Progress on Bleak House

I'm struggling hard to read this! Found out about Sparknotes, so that's a plus.

Hello.

Yesterday I managed to read 40 pages of Bleak House. It was tough. I should have made notes, and now I’m suffering. Dickens follows a dual narrative style in this book, with one narrative easy to understand and the other quite complex. The latter introduces many different areas and characters. It’s not that this book has as many characters as the average Fantasy novels do, but there are enough people placed in other areas that I’m now finding it hard to locate exactly who is talking and where.

Luckily, we now live in a world with AI, and I can ask Claude for help. I asked this question → ‘Why am I finding it so hard to read Bleak House? ’ And that was the best decision I’ve taken in a long time at 1 AM in the night.

It helped me stumble upon a certain website that I should have known about for a long time. Sparknotes!

This is a godsend. It has chapter summaries, so there are no spoilers. Gets into the details of themes and characters and a lot more. I’m excited to explore this new resource and see what I can learn, especially for the books that are not being discussed in Hardcore Literature. If you’re finding it hard to read any classic, do give it a try.

Anyway, here’s my plan now.

I’m going to read through the summaries for the chapters that I’ve already read in Bleak House. Then, I’ll make a list of locations and the characters that are situated there to get a good understanding of exactly where the conversation is happening.

And then take it slow, when I’m struggling to even understand. As far as I’ve read online, many people find this novel difficult to read due to a lack of context of the era. And obviously the crazy long lines! Dickens is good and equally hard.

Also, this was serialised in the magazine, I guess, over one full year. That is a lot of different chapters. Wish we had books come out this way so we could read one chapter and discuss and talk about it online.

Not going to say much today as I need a break. It’s been a tough few months, and I need to rest.

Thanks for reading!