Comments Bleak House

Bleak House: 05/03/05

I just finished reading Charles Dickens's Bleak House. It's a heavy volume of 1034 pages (that includes the intro and many appendices).

What is the Bleak House? It is an old mansion, home of John Jarndyce and his three wards: Ester, Ada and Richard. It is also the squalid conditions of Tom's-All-Alone. It is the bleak out come of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. It is the Victorian shame of an illegimate child. There are many bleak houses in this book.

Bleak House carries a warning against the excesses of nuisance suits and the danger of a laissez-faire government which it wraps up in a delightful albeit complex and dense comedic romance of a young woman supposedly orphaned and sent to live with her guardian who is stuck in a generations long lawsuit over an estate. Interestingly, I recently read an American story that obviously borrowed heavily from Bleak House. To anyone who enjoys Bleak House, I recommend The Big Mogul by Joseph C. Lincoln.

Read the review at Book-a-rama and The Blogmatic Zone.

Apple Pie: We had some Granny Smith apples left over from the seder so last night Sean and I made apple pie for dessert. He helped with the crust and supervised me while I sliced up the apples. He then helped with seasoning the apples. He loves to cook! The apple pie was delicious and we have lots left over.

I'm jokingly calling it "Mediterranean Apple Pie" because I had to use virgin olive oil in the crust. Actually olive oil makes for a very nice crust texture and taste. It's more interesting than corn oil. As it was a dessert pie, I tossed in a pinch of sugar to the crust mixture to sweeten it a bit. Yummy against the tartness of the apple filling!

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