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This post is the third of five for Charles Dickens Month hosted by Amanda over at Fig and Thistle.

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I have not been doing well at all with this event.  Tsk tsk tsk.  Anyway, I professed on this blog before that I plan to join the next group read planned by the members of The Charles Dickens Project over at Goodreads.  However, when I was at the bookstore last week, I came across the classics shelf and couldn’t stop drooling.  I know that most of the classics are now available free of charge but there is just something very different about reading from a physical book.  What I’m trying to say is that I might not join the next group read and might read the book that I am going to talk about.

Anyway, I was browsing at the collection of Charles Dickens books and the cover of  the Bleak House (Oxford World Classics) edition really caught my eye.  Since I’ve never read a synopsis of Bleak House and I try to avoid Wikipedia as much as possible because some articles are just full of spoilers, I checked out the back of the book.  This is the synopsis (which I copied from Goodreads):

Bleak House, Dickens’s most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections – -between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens’s later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother’s tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love.

The first sentence already sold me plus when I got to the part where mystery was mentioned (I love mysteries!), I wanted to buy the book right away BUT I needed to remind myself that I was short in cash that day and that I’ll have to settle with the ebook, for now. :)

I also happened to look at the back of Our Mutual Friend and just went crazy.  I love a story with a hint of mystery.  I’d probably dedicate my entire February calendar to reading Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.  Here is the synopsis from Amazon.com:

Following his father’s death John Harmon returns to London to claim his inheritance, but he finds he is eligible only if he marries Bella Wilfur. To observe her character he assumes another identity and secures work with his father’s foreman, Mr Boffin, who is also Bella’s guardian.

Disguise and concealment play an important role in the novel and individual identity is examined within the wider setting of London life: in the 1860s the city was aflame with spiralling financial speculation while thousands of homeless scratched a living from the detritus of the more fortunate-indeed John Harmon’s father has amassed his wealth by recycling waste.

This edition includes extensive explanatory notes and significant manuscript variants.

Anyway, those are the two that I would probably read once my schedule gets less hectic. :)