Bleak House 2005

Bleak House
Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House was first published as a serial beginning in March 1852 in 20 monthly installments before being released as a single book.

Opening passage
"London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."

Television series, Episode 01
​https://m.ok.ru/video/3099075021534

In third year of college, I read several novels for one English class (approximate pages): The Woman In White 700, The Moonstone 500, Jane Eyre 500, Emma 500, Pride and Prejudice 450, Vanity Fair 700, and Middlemarch 700. I tired at the last one and did not finish and the rest is history. That's at least 3,000 pages. Check out my Reading List or go Britannica:
https://www.britannica.com/art/American-literature/The-20th-century

SAT
I can offer proof for what she said. In 2007, my English SAT scores were in the mid-700s, based on test prep books. In 2017, my SAT scores had dropped into the mid-600s, based on the new test prep books, which is where I was in 12th grade. According to the SAT, this writer of over 25 years, at that point, had not improved at all.

Phonics
Oxford Dictionary
-a method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system
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I don't teach phonics because I don't tutor children under 11, and Alexander, now 11, is the best exception I've ever encountered.

Ira Shore
Born June 2, 1945, he is a professor at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, and teaches composition and rhetoric. Yep, you guessed it, he's Jewish.