I am the prodigal returning.
After reading Austin’s celebratory post last week, I realized that I really missed HPN. Plus, blogging here is way more fun than blogging by myself. So I’m moving back in and will hopefully coax the rest of you to do the same. HPN, version 3.0.
I’ve been reading Bleak House sporadically over the past year. I’m over 300 pages in, but I’m still not at the halfway point, so I find it easy to lose interest and put it down for a while. But I’m learning to appreciate Dickens, which is good. Case in point: descriptions.
During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact, that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced, have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds. (Ch. XXI)
That last sentence is priceless. So absurd and yet so vivid.