After failed attempts to read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations—doubtless failed because it was easier, and quicker, to watch the movies—I picked up Bleak House, about which I knew nothing, and was immediately and utterly enthralled, starting with Dickens’s dinosaur shout-out. It always struck me as weirdly out of place in this most Victorian of novels, but as a Dickens specialist eventually pointed out to me, Dickens always had his eye on what the public found fascinating at that precise second and, showman that he was, made good use of it. Which is why one should not be surprised—though
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