(required) reading is sexy

Most of the books I read for entertainment are mistaken for required reading.  I'm re-reading Bleak House for what SEEMS like the millionth time, but is, in actuality, the fourth. Maybe it seems like the millionth time because there are a million pages. Regardless, I love getting lost in Victorian England and spending my afternoons with colorful characters and forgetting about modern day troubles. One of my favorite regulars at work is a true Dickensian, with the proper trio of letters after his name as validation, and is one of the few people I've met who I can discuss this book with. He's also got to be close to 70 years old.

I feel alone in a world where people want to continually write modern sequels to Jane Austen books, or where the only classic worth reading is a zombie version.

One of my favorite original Bleak House illustrations

I find merit in and 

get lost in and 

fall in love with 

modern literature too, but it will never replace my love for the macabre gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century or the coming-of-age existential bildungsroman-esque novels of Victorian England. 

I'm really in love with Penguin's new clothbound classics *available at anthropologie* which I hope will put more glamour into "required reading." 

this being said, i think i'll curl up with my dachshunds and my book.