February with The Inimitable

If you knew who The Inimitable was before reading this post, then you're one up on me, but here are some hints ... He has written over a dozen major novels (plus numerous short stories and articles), has a $100 million dollar indoor theme park based on his work, has had over 100 different adaptations of his novels to film, and celebrates his 200th birthday on February 7.


Did you guess the author?  It's Charles Dickens, and he will be my focus this February.


Up this month:


Three works by the man himself :  Bleak House, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and either Little Dorrit or The Old Curiosity Shop (both of these last are chunksters so I'll have to see how the month goes)


A biography:  Dickens: Public Life & Private Passions by Peter Ackroyd.  According to Goodreads, this book is "the first fully illustrated accessible biography of Dickens, the perfect book for anyone wanting to know more about this fascinating author without having to wade through 600+ pages of detail. "  That sounds about right for me.


And for fun:

• Dining With Dickens  by Cedric Dickens (no relation I assume)
• The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits  edited by Mike Ashley
• What Jane Austen Ate & What Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox-Hunting to Whist, The Facts of Daily Life in 19th Century England by Daniel Pool

I'm jumping into the deep end first with Bleak House ....  Anyone with me?