Woot! I’m in for another round.
Since you ask - I was disappointed and stopped reading at 15% in, according to my kindle. Right after Walter encounters the woman in white for the second time, in the churchyard. I liked Marian, but otherwise the writing just didn’t work for me. I’m not a big fan of Dickens, but I like several other Victorian classics, and I wish I had liked this one better.
You get points for trying! It did take a little getting into for sure, but once I got over the pacing of it I found I really enjoyed it. I’m sorry you couldn’t say the same, but I am glad you gave it a shot and hope that Call of the Wild is a better choice for you this time around.
I really liked “Woman in White.” Those of you who loved villain Count Fosco may interested in one book in a series I read. This continuing series consist of the Pendergast novels by the writing team of Preston and Child. Their contemporary thriller “Brimstone” has as villain this very Count Fosco!
In the afterwood they mention that some readers may have recognized Count Fosco from “Woman in White” and, yes, they did lift him bodily from that novel. One because they love him and second in hope of drawing readers to Wilkie Collins.
pbbth – that’s a good point about Fosco being in love with Marian.
And, yes, nowawdays it’s inexplicable why Walter doesn’t marry Marian instead, but it would have made him a real cad for abaondoning Laura.
Oh my god, I had forgotten about that! I read that book years ago, long before I’d even heard of TWIW, and thought he was a fantastic villain there too. Now I need to go reread my copy of Brimstone!
Interesting about the Preston and Child book–I’ll look for that.
I’m guessing that the sheer length of TWIW has limited the number of people participating. (We’ll probably have more for the Jack London book.) It’s a shame, as it really is worth the time.
One thing that stands out to me is the connection between the highly-stylized artificialities of “polite society” in 19th-century Britain, and the precarious nature of the class system at that time. Of course the class system exists to this day, but is a mere shadow of its former strength. Back in 1850 the coming cataclysm was already underway, due to the Industrial Revolution. It was not to be the case for much longer that a sum of money passed from one generation to the next as the sole support for living (e.g. Laura’s “twenty thousand pounds”).
When there isn’t really much scope for “earning a living,” and all you can hope for is to either hold on to a chunk of capital left you by your parents, or to inherit a chunk of capital due to the deaths of intervening heirs, then your mind doesn’t have all that much to occupy itself with, other than the niceties of when to come down to dinner, how to dress, how to get from one location to another without being accused of impropriety, and so on.
In part I think this accounts for Laura’s seemingly-insane decision to marry Glyde—a decision that makes it difficult for modern readers to sympathize with her.
Today, a woman who had promised her now-deceased father to marry a certain man, and who found that she disliked the man, would say something like ‘I know Father meant well, but he didn’t know then what I know now, and I’m sure he wouldn’t hold me to that promise.’ But Laura lived in a world in which she had nothing to do, really, but fixate on the dishonor of being disobedient to a dead father–to do so incorrect a thing as break a promise would be to live in daily agony of mind. We, who have so much more to engage our thoughts, would never be prey to that sort of obsessiveness.
Bumping so pbbth doesn’t forget to start the The Call of the Wild thread tomorrow. 
I was way too busy before Christmas to join you all in reading The Woman In White, but this one’s already on my Nook, next in line to be read!
Come join us for the Call of the Wild discussion! Conversation is moving a little slow but I can’t wait to hear what everyone else thinks about the book!