Charles Dickens is my favorite author of all time. I just love the way he writes. He has the ability to be sarcastic in a classy way. A Christmas Carol is a favorite of mine. I read it every Christmas. I also love Oliver Twist.

Just saw the play today at Phoenix's Herberger Theatre (a musical version, quite nice!) joined the 7th graders on field trip there!! One student expressed his intention to read this book!

Great Expectations - ****
Hard Times - ***
A Christmas Carol - *****
A Tale of Two Sities - ***

Gently used. Some marks ect.

I'd like to read all of these books. Right now I'm tackling Hard Times and I love it.

After watching many versions of "A Christmas Carol" on the screen and stage, I read the original. It is beautiful!

No need to review this book. It is an icon of western culture. In my family, it was read aloud every year the week before Christmas until I left home.

It was probably the single most formative book in my life.

The most significant piece of the book....in my memory comes
at the end of the 3rd Stave

"The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at the moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"O Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds....

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's" said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "This boy is IGNORANCE. This girl is WANT. Beware of them both, and all their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

"Have they no refuge or resource?" Cried Scrooge. "Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workshouses?"

The spirit then disappears and Scrooge is left to the last spirit.

This image of ignorance and want have shaped my belief system. They have made me less ready to blame individuals for their circumstances and ready to look at ways we can all help each other in this life. This scene foreshadows the writing on Scrooges tombstone -- can it be erased?

Dickens resoundingly says yes. It is not too late for Scrooge. It is not too late for humankind-- we can erase that which will lead to our Doom.

It took me 6 months but I finally found a 1887 mint book of the Tale of Two Cities and am excited to read!

Just started really, but I'm reving to go!!

A Tale of Two Cities had a big impact on me.

we should all be reading these classic novels more... great reminders of proper language and society.

Recently re-read. So funny! I forgot that. Master of characterization. Did I mention I read Great Expectations on my phone this time?!