Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Two short classics, both about rich jerks

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

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I’m not sure I can say much about these books that hasn’t already been said, but both were worthwhile reads. Both of these short classics are basically: don’t be a rich jerk. Scrooge, of course, learns in the end how not to be a rich jerk; the couple in The Pearl learns, or rather knows already, and uncovers the truth in a more holistic way, that wealth opens opportunities for evil, and it turns out that it’s if people are jerks who want to be […]

Hard Times for These Times

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

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So, Hard Times.  Or to give the book its full title, Hard Times for These Times.  And has there ever been a more perfect title for These Days? If you are unfamiliar with Charles Dickens, besides, perhaps, A Christmas Carol, there are a few things you ought to know about the man.  The man is, nearly always, On A Mission.  (OK, the Pickwick Papers is just plain fun.)  He’s from the Victorian era, newspapers have just been, more or less, invented, and his books are […]

This reimagining just doesn’t do justice to the old classic

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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Almost every year I’ll take a time-out from holiday mayhem and revisit A Christmas Carol. I was reluctant to review it for CBR, though, because I did that already, back in 2014. So I hit the internet and searched for something Christmas-related that I hadn’t read before and found Mr. Dickens and His Carol on several lists of best Christmas books. Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a fictional account of how Dickens came to write that famous Christmas ghost story. A few details do come […]

An Artful Novel

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So Dickens chose to write about Oliver Twist, the cherubic little orphan lost in the big bad world. But I think we all know who the more interesting character is – Jack Dawkins, otherwise known as the Artful Dodger. In fact, that’s how the book starts: the preface “reintroduces us to the acclaimed Mr. Jack Dawkins, known to sundry as the Artful Dodger, and laments the inattention paid him as compared to more simpering examples of the day.” The author goes on to explain why […]

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

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As I read Great Expectations a lot of questions popped up for me. Do people struggle through some of this old language like I am doing?  Is this book still relevant, or is it a quaint morality tale belonging to 19th century England?  What was Dicken’s own stance on class?  And, was Helena Bonham Carter’s portrayal of Miss Haversham over the top?  (I haven’t seen the film adaptation, a friend described her performance as contained).  I actually had a heavily annotated edition of the book, […]



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