Bleak House
by Charles Dickens · first published 1850
20% recommend80% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Sprawling Victorian novel following a long-running lawsuit and its effect on many lives. Its vivid opening and interlocking characters stand out. Suited to lovers of big 19th-century fiction.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends fr
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All of the above, Life and Fate is essential, but also add Middlemarch: George Eliot - grown up problems, don't lie, be careful around money Bleak House: Charles Dickens - avoid lawyers, don't let money get to you More left field - Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend - consistency is over-rated; any Houllebecq - keep thinking; Quartered…
on “Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?” ↗"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, unless I can get Anthony Trollope's "Barsetshire Chronicles" accepted as a single book.
on “Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?” ↗…Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/2ab29d16-0cb1-4ef8-8cde... Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/65214629-29ac-45a6-b474... Bleak House by Charles Dickens The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/bd090cb4-bc9a-41cb-9833... Nonfiction - The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine (my luckiest find…
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗Bleak House by Charles Dickens
on “Ask HN: Good books written before ~1900?” ↗+1 to both Middlemarch and Bleak House - I generally go for the Russians over the Brits when it comes to 19th century fiction, but those two are the exception. And both Eliot and Dickens certainly influenced Tolstoy, at least according to…
on “Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?” ↗I'm a big fan of Bleak House. The opening chapter is one if my favorite bits of Dickens. But it is a silly selection to expect a random undergrad from a state school in middle America to be able to fully parse on command unless they…
on “College English majors can't read” ↗> But my admiration for Middlemarch and Bleak House goes beyond their portrayal of the psychological interiority of their characters. [...] Both novels succeed at something else: they invite us to think across multiple scales of experience—and to make…
on “How to Read a Novel” ↗…is a major factor prompting litigants to settle even though they are not particularly happy with an outcome. Charles Dickens, though he exaggerated for dramatic effect, got the spirit of this right in Bleak House (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce), and little has changed since. This, by the way, doesn't mean that you can't defend against cease-and-desist demands. Costs cut both ways. But it…
on “Kind of Screwed” ↗…reading list. I also have philosophy, research papers, long-form academic books, popular science books, and the like. ----- For reference, here's the next new card for one of the books I'm reading: Bleak House Charles Dickens CHAPTER III --------------------------------------------------------------------- coach gave me a terrible start. It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?" I was…
on “How to write good prompts: using spaced repetition to create understanding” ↗What about texts where there are more or less “canonical” illustrations? Like, for an edition of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, it’s just not the same without the sketches by “Phiz” that were present in the original publication. Same with John Tenniels illustrations of Alice in Wonderland. Amazing project…
on “Standard Ebooks” ↗"In his 1852–3 novel Bleak House, Charles Dickens popularised the term telescopic philanthropy." source: https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Telescopic_philanthropy Middlemarch started serial publication in 1871. So George Elliot gets to…
on “Philip Pullman: ‘I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch’” ↗> A study of English literature students at American universities found that they were unable to understand the first paragraph of Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House — a book that was once regularly read by children. First, I think this is overly crediting "children" and unnecessarily harsh to the university students. The first sentence of the book proper is, "LONDON.…
on “The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation” ↗I was blown away by how... retarded... my reading comprehension and skills really are, when I recently opened Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," reading just the first couple of pages in! Yet I am even more deeply troubled that I am above the median.
on “Why I'm Skeptical About Efforts to Revolutionize Schooling” ↗…supposed decline in literacy that of late like to reference this study https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 conducted in 2015 but published 2024 where students were asked to read from Charles Dickens' Bleak House https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html... and explain the meaning as they went.
on “Three Theses on the Literacy Crisis” ↗…it. But are you really going to get it in the same way as someone who reads and imagines young Oliver Twist asking for "more", or about the smoke and the mud and the fog crawling down over rooftops in Bleak House?
on “I like 'em thick OR: an apology to my English teachers” ↗