Whenever I read any of Charles Dickens' works, I always think that what a great man he had been. His way of creating plots which are soo relatable yet powerful always makes me to read more of his works.
As far as this book concerns, it is marvellous. I kid you not when I say this book will definitely make you feel something. At least I felt. A lot. Of course, it's Charles Dickens we are talking about. I have read many of his short stories. But never read a book. This was my first read of his books. And definitely won't be last.

OVERVIEW
A man named Scrooge is our protagonist. He just wants money. He feels like death whenever someone asks him to invest for helping poor people. He just invests there, from where he may get money in return.
His business partner, who is also a miser, dies. His ghost tells Scrooge about his selfishness and its results. He also tells him that he can be saved by these results with the help of three ghosts. One of them shows him his past, one shows him his present and the last one shows him his future.


I liked Scrooge. His character is very well written. And his transformation is great. It feels very natural.
The one thing I couldn't get that the Ghost of Future was silent. He didn't speak a word. What Mr. Dickens was trying to show with this?
Regardless, I enjoyed every moment of reading this book.
I would highly recommend this book to every human who can read. Must give it a chance. You won't regret.

April 22, 2017

After seeing countless movie versions, this was my first time reading the book. Even though at times I thought it overly descriptive and some parts tended to go on a bit, it's still a wonderful story and a Christmas classic.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the current runaway leader for a reread in the group Catching up on Classics for December. As I gear up for what looks to be some intense reading during the last two months of the year, I decided to pre read this short classic this week. Being that I do not observe the Christmas holiday and can sometimes feel overwhelmed by its presence during the last six weeks of the year, I felt that it was better for me to read Dickens' classic early so I could keep an open mind. Other than references to this story on television, I had never read A Christmas Carol until now, so I was eager to participate in the upcoming group read.

Dickens tale has become almost symbiotic with the holiday season. What may be unknown to some is Dickens' background in that during his lifetime it was common for entire families to join their relatives in debtors prison or to work off their debt. Dickens' father fell upon hard times, so his son went to work in an attempt to bail his father from jail. While this episode did not last for longer than a few months, it stayed with Dickens for his entire life, and is reflected upon in his characters and work. Perhaps Ebenezer Scrooge is as obsessed with money as he is because the Dickens family did not come from wealth and always desired just a little more so that they would not be wondering where their next meal came from. Charles Dickens himself does not seem like the happiest person in the world, a decent father to his children but not the ideal husband. Maybe, just maybe, he contained a kernel of Scrooge's personality within himself.

The tale of a miserly, wealthy man being visited by three spirits; past, present, and future; contains universal themes that pertain to all people. These spirits are sent to Scrooge so that he reform himself before he dies a miserable, lonely man. While the purpose here is that Scrooge uses his wealth to become a giving person at the holiday season, I was touched by the theme of redemption. Judaism also speaks of one's potential to repent for one's bad deeds either through prayer or charity so I used this as a basis for the redemption of Scrooge on his journey with the spirits. Most world religions have a supernatural element, and I believe that the spiritual aspect of A Christmas Carol has allowed this tale to remain on the forefront of society's collective pathos. That the story takes place during the holiday season only increases the likelihood of one's exposure to Scrooge and his path toward redemption.

Dickens' story is short enough that children can read it either alone or with a parent. The version I read was actually shelved at my library as juvenile fiction and contained a forward by Newberry winning author Nancy Farmer. Farmer writes in her message to young readers that she read A Christmas Carol for the first time in one evening when she was a child. She enjoyed the spookiness of the ghosts while also being moved by Scrooge's ability to reform and give assistance to those in need. The reading guide at the end of the book also encourages people to donate either their time or money to charity during the holiday season. While not everyone is able to give at Scrooge's level, Dickens does encourage those who can to assist those who may be lacking. Thus, A Christmas Carol speaks to another universal theme, one that is timely in light of the many natural disasters that have occurred recently, that of charity.

While I am not likely to reread A Christmas Carol each year at the fireside, I did enjoy the universal message of a person having the ability to reform oneself before it is too late. Scrooge has become such a part of vernacular that no person wants to be referred to as a Scrooge or coldhearted person. Yet, that misses the essence of this tale because Scrooge did indeed see the light and become kind at the close of the story. I do love the timelessness of Dickens tale and that his work is accessible to all. As I am always looking for hidden classics by authors the world over, I sometimes neglect in reading the masters of western cannon, Dickens included. Perhaps, this is a wake up call to me to read more Dickens in the years to come because I did enjoy A Christmas Carol immensely.

4+ stars

“Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas…”
-tCharles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is probably the most perfect story I have ever read. Not the best, mind you, and not even my favorite. But in its sublime unity of theme and execution, its graceful symmetries and memorable moments, it is tough to beat. It has been said that A Christmas Carol is the most adapted written work in the English language, and it seems a likely claim, having inspired countless movies, television specials, musicals, and theatrical productions. It is a testament to the essential worthiness of the source material that Dickens’s classic is so readily adaptable in so many mediums, and works just as well when interpreted by Mr. Magoo or Muppets or George C. Scott.

A Christmas Carol has long since transcended its status as a mere novella, and has become symbolic of Christmas itself. More than most books you come across, it is a mood as much as anything. In approximately one-hundred pages – depending on which of the nine-thousand editions you choose – you are confronted with a chilling protagonist who, over the course of five compact acts, will have his certainties challenged, his illusions shattered, and his heart changed.

All of this seems trite and melodramatic in summary; in practice, it is pure magic, a precious gem that waits to be reread each year, and each year just as good as the last.

***

You probably already know this, but A Christmas Carol tells the tale of an aging miser named Ebenezer Scrooge. He works in a counting-house with his poor, put-upon clerk Bob Cratchit. Once upon a time, Scrooge had a partner, Jacob Marley, but when the novella opens, Marley has been dead seven years, though Scrooge seems barely to notice.

Until, that is, Marley appears to him as a ghost, bearing a warning.

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world…and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”

Marley himself is one of the condemned, as greedy and avaricious as his old partner, and now bearing a “ponderous chain” corresponding to his selfish life. He informs Scrooge that his own chain is even larger, yet there is the possibility of escape. This lifeline is comprised of three separate ghosts – Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come – who will visit him on three separate nights.

Though Scrooge is a bit hesitant of this deal, he is ultimately given little choice on the matter, and those three visits comprise the unforgettable spine of this book.

***

Dickens wrote some doorstoppers in his life. Big, shaggy, serialized novels like Bleak House and David Copperfield, filled with digression and convoluted plot-twists. A Christmas Carol is exceptionally different. It is lean and clean and fast. Dickens may have struggled during the writing, but the finished product bears no sign of it. A Christmas Carol hits every mark with assuredness. To read it is to feel like Dickens knew exactly what he was doing with every sentence, even if that was not actually how it happened.

No matter what else you think about Dickens – and I find him to be strikingly hit-or-miss – the man knew how to create an indelible character. There isn’t much of a roster in A Christmas Carol, but everyone makes the best of their moment on stage. For the most part, this is Scrooge’s show, as he is the only one given even a hint of psychological depth or shading. But that’s okay, because Scrooge has become one of the most recognized figures in literature, if not in all of western pop culture.

The supporting cast, including Cratchit, nephew Fred, and the ghosts themselves, are mostly foils for Scrooge. Still, Dickens presents them flawlessly, using them both to define Scrooge’s contours, and to land emotional blows. We may not know what makes Tiny Tim tick, but we sure aren’t going to forget him.

***

The writing in A Christmas Carol just sparkles. At certain times, Dickens leans hard into the spooky, gothic-horror aspects. At others, he is playful and wry, with conversational exchanges that crackle and pop. Indeed, these two approaches are often combined to wonderful effect, as in Scrooge’s first meeting with Marley, which is both ominous and funny. One of the telling indicators of the prose – especially the dialogue – is that most adaptations simply transfer Dickens’s words wholesale, without making a change.

Dickens always had a finely honed social conscience, and that is on display here. Mostly, though, he keeps his touch light, without losing any impact. Only the Ghost of Christmas Present tends towards pedantry, and that’s only towards the end of his tour. Mostly, Dickens makes his points through highly-polished vignettes, such as Scrooge’s observations of the Cratchit family.

***

The Christmas cynic says that the season is hypocritical, and that even those people who volunteer, give money, and donate food and gifts only do so once a year.

The optimist says that maybe the Christmas spirit can be contagious, like a benign virus, and that the goodness of the season, or even just the day, can spread.

The realist understands that most people – myself included – need a kick in the butt to give more, and to help more, and to be kinder. Even if that only happens for the roughly thirty-day period between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, it’s at least something. It’s a start.

That’s the lesson of A Christmas Carol. The Ghosts don’t change Scrooge; he changes himself. And as Dickens famously writes, he kept that going the rest of his days: “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world.”

Maybe we won’t undergo a late-December miracle, but maybe we can all be a little bit better, at least until March.

***

“Timeless” is probably an overused adjective, yet A Christmas Carol has earned that sobriquet. It spoke to audiences in 1843, and continues to speak to us, almost one-hundred-and-eighty years later. Of course, it is not entirely unique or original. Dickens was obviously influenced by writers such as Washington Irving, whose own holiday stories he read, and by the emerging Christmas zeitgeist. Beyond that, I’m sure most cultures have a similar archetypal account of a rich man forced to transform his ways.

Dickens’s accomplishment is in taking existing elements and fitting them into a seamless, endlessly satisfying structure, putting Scrooge through his paces so that his eventual redemption is earned, rather than forced.

Also, he totally crushes the names.

***

It is our reality as humans that most of our lives exist in what we can remember. After all, we have control only of the instant second, and already, that second is passing.

For me, Christmas is a marker of time. I have forgotten the vast majority of my days on earth, but can recall most of my Christmases. They are these brilliant nodes of recollection, as real now as they ever were: the Christmas I – like Ralphie Parker – got my first BB gun; the last Christmas I had with my grandparents, and the first one without; the Christmas after my parents divorced; the first Christmas I spent with my wife; the Christmas that occurred ten days after the birth of my first child. Most are sweet, some bittersweet, and all of them locked behind a door in my mind, waiting for the right key.

That key comes in many forms: an ornament on my mom’s tree that has been reflecting light since the Great Depression; the smell of pine; the first few chords of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

A Christmas Carol is part of that. It is a vessel, a vein to be tapped. Once opened, it unleashes a flood of visitors: not three spirits, but ten-thousand memories and one.

Every year or so I re-read this lovely Dickens' classic, and I appreciate it the same every time. It is one of the few stories that is so well written that even Hollywood dares not tamper with it. I have seen (as no doubt you have) multiple versions of this story and no one ever tries to add or subtract from the events. That is a statement in itself.

When we think "Christmas", much of what comes to mind comes directly from the pages of this book. I hope we can all find a moment to include the three spirits in our lives this year. And, as Tiny Tim would say, "God Bless us, every one."

4+ out of 5 stars to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a story almost everyone is likely familiar with as early on as childhood. And we've all seen some form of this in a TV show, movie or another book, given how familiar the three ghosts of Christmas have become.



n  n    Why This Bookn  n
I honestly don't recall how I stumbled upon this book, perhaps by watching one of the movie versions as the first foray. Sacrilegious, I know. But once you see it on a TV screen, the story compels you to want to read it. And when it's the great Charles Dickens, how can you say no, right? I was 17 when I read the book... the summer before college started. And I often wonder if I missed out by not reading it when I was younger... but then again, the movie had already formed images in my mind and set the expectations, so probably turned out OK.



n  n    Overview of Storyn  n
A quick summary, as I'm sure we're all familiar. Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge run a business. Bob Cratchit works for them and several young kids. Marley dies. Scrooge is a penny pincher. He forces Cratchit to work too hard and the man is already so poor and loving to his family. One night, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost, forewarning him to be a nicer person and to listen when "they" come. Scrooge laughs. "Who's they?" He mocks him. And then it happens... three ghosts visit Scrooge and show him a Christmas from the past, a current Christmas and a future Christmas, all resulting from the way Scrooge and Marley ran their business -- essentially, a way to show the old man what his behavior has caused all around him. A reflection pool of the inner workings deep in your mind you've refused to hear or see for far too long. And when Scrooge sees poor Timmy, Bob Cratchit's son, and the maladies surrounding him, Scrooge realizes he, too, must re-learn his lessons.



n  n    Strengthn  n
In true Dickens style, the words are beautiful. The story reads itself, not the reader. And you find such broad strokes of characters and morals within these 100 pages. You learn from it. You open your mind and accept what's already somewhere in your heart.



n  n    Open Itemsn  n
None really... mostly when's the best time to introduce this to children? Too young and you scare them. Too old and you miss out on helping them. It's one of those books you should read together with your kids.



n  n    Final Thoughtsn  n
Read the book before you watch any movies. Then figure out how to help people in your life, just like Scrooge learns to. This book is all about lessons... and every reader can take away something different with their imagination and application to their own thoughts and actions.



n  n    About Men  n
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures.

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Just lovely. Something I never really thought about before that appears so striking and obvious here now is how much this seems to owe to Dante’s Comedy. Scrooge’s redemption is brought about by giving him a kind of otherworldly guided tour, of course, but one that’s also structured something like Dante’s great terza-rima three-fest. Each of the three temporal phases Scrooge passes through is subdivided again into three main vignettes: Christmas Past consists of a scene from Scrooge’s childhood, Fezziwig’s party, and the vision of Belle; Christmas Present consists of the market, the scene at Bob Cratchit’s, and Scrooge’s nephew’s home; and Christmas Yet to Come consists of the funeral episode, the mourning montage, and the vision of Scrooge’s grave. These come together to provide moral instruction like in Dante’s Purgatorio, where each of the sins is divided into three, with the penance itself framed by the demonstrative whip and bridle so that the penitent learns not just from the punishment itself but from specific examples of the vice and its complementary virtue. And because it’s the story of Scrooge’s redemption, this is all purgatorial rather than infernal for him in the end. (Of course this is Dickens, so surely there’s a Master’s thesis or two on exactly this. Or maybe three.)

Scrooge era atrozmente tacaño, avaro, cruel, desalmado, miserable, codicioso, incorregible, duro…, pero leer su historia (que ya conocía gracias a la gran pantalla) me ha encantado

Whether we have read the book or not I think we all know the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his overnight conversion from miser to philanthropist. The most amazing thing is that a novella written so long ago still has such an effect on us each year at Christmas time.

I love Dickens and always have ever since I was introduced to him at school by way of David Copperfield and Great Expectations. A Christmas Carol is one of his easier reads but it is still full of his wonderful way with language. No one writes descriptions quite like him!

This was a reread for me and I am very glad I did it. Maybe I will find time to reread some more of his major works this coming year:)

A holiday classic and an absolute delight. I really don't like Dickens anywhere else, but this story is timeless with a powerful message of compassion's great worth. I really look forward to a family tradition of an annual re-read.

5 stars out of 5.

By God, Dickens just got me into a Christmas spirit!
I’m so glad I finally read this classic. It’s an excellent tale of redemption and joy.

If you have been living under a rock all these years and have not read this yet, what are you waiting for? Don't be like Scrooge. It's only 162 pages of pure unadulterated Christmas joy. Bah humbug!

What a way to continue my annual Christmas reading...

If there is one story that is synonymous with Christmas, it would be Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. How I have gone so long in my life never having read this story, I do not know. I quite liked the movie from the early 1950s and always used that as my benchmark for what the story is all about, but chose to take the plunge and read Dickens’ actual words, yet another tradition that comes from the Victorian era.

As miserly Ebenezer Scrooge heads home late one Christmas Eve night, he is visited by the apparition of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, dead seven years. Marley’s apparition tells that Scrooge will be visited by three ghosts who will show him essential things that he needs to know.

While Scrooge scoffs at the entire process, he is startled when the first ghost appears to take him into the past. This experience shows Scrooge some of the events from his past and how he became the man he is today. A second ghost explores current decisions Scrooge has been making, including some of the most miserly choices he could have made. Quite startled by this point, Scrooge does not want the third visit, but must see life as it would be after his passing and how others will speak of him. This is enough to help bring about an epiphany for the elderly Ebenezer, who sees the world for what it could be. A Christmas classic that I will definitely add to my annual read list, this one is recommended for anyone eager to explore Christmas and its true meaning.

Many of my friends on Goodreads have read this book and are as astounded as me that I had never done so myself. I found myself enthralled from the opening sentences and remained captivated throughout. I will admit that I chose to let the stellar voice of Tim Curry guide me through the Audible version of this tale, which brought the experience to life for me and will be used each December, of that I can be sure. Dickens is a master storyteller and many renditions of this story have emerged over the years, all of which have their own spin on the story. The themes that come up as Scrooge explores his life are sensational and there is little about which any reader could complain. Divided into five distinct staves, Dickens pulls the reader in and keeps their attention until the final sentence, never letting things lose momentum. I can only hope to find more exciting tales in the years to come, to add to my December collection.

Kudos, Mr. Dickens, for a stunning story that touches the heart of each reader in its own way.

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