I was really looking forward to reading Hard Times when I pulled it off the shelf. I’m a Dickens fan. A Tale of Two Cities is one of my all-time favorites, and Bleak House is right up there, too. And I have to say this was the most Dickensian novel that Dickens ever Dickensed. Unfortunately, that’s not a good thing. It lacked a lot of my favorite things about Dickens. There wasn’t much of a mystery. There weren’t many great lines. And there weren’t any […]
Great expectations: why did this have to be my first cannonball
So my first ever Cannonball review and boy I wish it didn’t have to be this book. One of the things I want to achieve with my cannonball is to reawaken my love of reading. As a teenager through to my early years at college I loved reading but somewhere along the way, like an old friend, I lost touch with my passion for books. Don’t get me wrong I still read a couple of books a year usually on holiday but that side of […]
Simple Lessons are the Hardest to Learn
Way back when I was a kid in the 1970s, I remember seeing part of a TV production of Great Expectations starring Michael York as Pip. While I had forgotten most of the story, I do have a vivid recollection of Miss Havisham, who cannot help but leave an impression on a viewer or reader. I don’t think I ever read the novel before now, or if I tried, I never finished. And so with this review, I give a nod to “the canon,” which […]
God Bless Us, Everyone!
To close out my cannonball, I thought it’d be seasonally appropriate to revisit a Christmas classic. I say “revisit” even though I had never before read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but due to its cultural ubiquity I felt like I have. Like most people I’ve seen multiple adaptations of the story, from the Reginald Owens and Alistair Sim black-and-white movies to Michael Caine with the Muppets and the tragically typecast Scrooge McDuck in the Disney version, I’ve seen them all. So in reading the novella […]
A Classic Christmas Tale
Would you judge me if I said I hadn’t read A Christmas Carol until this December? And I’m an English teacher! Luckily the student-lead book club at my school decided they wanted to make sure they had read this Christmas classic before they went off to college. I’m glad they made this selection because it was certainly time for me to get my feet wet with this classic. This review is hard to write. What’s there really to say about one of the most well-known […]
A classic gets a pleasant but unnecessary sequel.
The Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, is one of my favorite books. I love the language, the sly wit, and the simple but timeless story of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. I will confess I’ve never given much thought to what came next but this book is here to answer that question. For those familiar with A Christmas Carol you will immediately notice the descriptions and setup in the sequel is the same as the first book. The book is divided into the same […]