While I’ve been reading brand-new books and others that have languished on my to-read list, I’ve been trying to read books on my shelf that I own and haven’t cracked open yet. I’ve had a years-long stack that just hasn’t gotten read, so I thought if I checked out some of the audiobooks, I could get through that list faster. Oliver Twist was one of those books on my shelf. Charles Dickens is known for his picaresque tales of poverty, suffering, and corruption in England, […]
God Bless Us Every Quarter Cannonball!
Everyone knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as the story of a mean old miser named Scrooge who has a change of heart after being visited by four ghosts. I have seen many film versions of this story, but I can’t really choose a favourite amongst them as they include things that I like and things that I don’t. The main difference between the movies and the book is that the book has many things that the movies […]
Weighty but Worth It
[Finished 7/28/14] This weighty novel took a long time to finish (especially because it was way too big to lug with me on RAGBRAI) but overall, I found it fascinating and gripping, even as I noted some of the moments that felt like a “glorious mess,” particularly the ending. Donna Tartt tells the story of Theo Decker and his life reads like a Dickens’s story translated to the 21st century. A twist of fate finds Theo and his mom at a New York museum just […]
Some Books Can’t Be Read Too Many Times
I don’t recall exactly how old I was the first time I read A Christmas Carol, but I was in grade school, and I knew enough to know that this Dickens fellow was an author adults read. Still, the volume was thin enough to be un-intimidating, and the illustrations were friendly, so I checked it out of the library (with the encouragement of the local librarian, I should say!). I remember being a bit taken aback when Dickens spent the better part of the first […]
This is not the Dickens I was Looking for
I haven’t read any Dickens. Ever. What at first was an oversight had turned over the years into a point of silly pride. Sometimes you just don’t want to read a classic author, you know? I’m sure part of it was that for many years one of the holiday events I worked was based on A Christmas Carol. The story is ubiquitous. Almost everyone knows the story of Scrooge being visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, getting himself scared straight and […]