One sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despair - Dombey and Son is a long book, but I'm in no hurry - plus a brilliant blog idea

Dombey and Son has been in my "Currently Reading" list for a couple of months, and it may be there for a couple more. I've been known to leave comments at other blogs, meant to be encouraging, when people express apprehension about long books, particularly those of Dickens, about the original leisurely serial publcation. The very first readers of Dombey and Son took eighteen months, plus a day, to read the whole thing. They read about fifty pages a month. So why fret if it takes six months. That's three times the original pace.

So I'm not all talk. I'm mostly talk, but not all talk. The Mill on the Floss is my current goin'-to-work book, and I'll probably just gnaw through it, like a rat, at a steady pace, 30 to 50 pages a day, until it's done. But Dombey and Son, I'm reading that one in the original spirit, sometimes a chapter at a sitting, sometimes a 40 or 50 page chunk, like one of the monthly serialized pieces, but with no regularity or schedule.

I've seen people worry that they will forget characters, or forget what happened. I do forget characters, and I do forget what happened, but then Dickens reminds me. He was writing for readers who hadn't read the story for a month. He builds some of that in.

Just as an example, I don't remember if the stony, stupefied fellow I put in the title is Tozer or Briggs. Let me look it up:

"Paul answered yes; and Tozer pointing out the stony pupil, said that was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either Briggs or Tozer, though he didn't know why." (Ch. 12)

See, it's not just me. Even the characters in the book have trouble keeping the characters straight.

This all leads to me a brilliant litblog idea. Someone should read all of Dickens at once, in order, but at the pace of the original serialization. But all at once, see. On the first of the month, read the first Pickwick Papers serial. On the second, read the first slice of Oliver Twist. On the third, Nicholas Nickleby. So the commitment is only about 50 pages a day. A complication is that some of the novels were weekly serials, not monthly. So you'd have to adjust the schedule accordingly. But there are only(!) fifteen novels, so there's flexibility, and even room to read something besides Dickens.

Note that the reading load decreases over time. The unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood will quickly drop out of the rotation. The weeklies will also wrap up before you know it, after six months or so. You'll have room to squeeze in the Christmas books. For the big monthlies, the last installment was a double, parts 19 and 20 under one cover, so there will be extra reading in the last month.

Did I say "brilliant"? I meant "idiotic" - but you'll have read every Dickens novel in 19 months, and I'm sure you'll have a book contract, which is the point of this sort of gimmick, right?