A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities: The Audible Dickens Collection by Charles Dickens

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" is one of the great intros of all time. Beyond that, I was pretty lost. When I had to read Tale of Two Cities in high school, I could not get into it at all. I read the whole book, but nothing stuck. Trying it again now was only marginally better. There was  a lot of anti-immigrant banter. It seemed the French revolution took some detours with "liberty, equality or death". A guy manages to show some mixed English, French ties and hopes to avoid the death part. There is also some romance and other bits in there. This narration was fairly unintelligible at 3.5 speed, but sounded fine around 3.2x. 

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

This book looks at how Dickens's Christmas Carol influenced our current Christmas traditions. It starts with background of the life of Dickens, pivots to the history of Christmas, then wraps it all together. Then as a bonus, the full text of A Christmas Carol is included at the end. (Thank you Public Domain!)

Charles Dickens had a rough childhood. His parents were regularly living above their means. They did not have significant vices. However, despite a decent job, his father always managed to spend more than he earned. Charles would work jobs to support his family. Eventually he got a writing job, and later started publishing novels. He was earning money. However, copyright was not extremely strong at the time, especially in America, leading to various low-priced clones of his work. A Christmas Carol was written in part as a way to earn money.

Society had an interesting relationship with Christmas. It was the merging of a pagan holiday with Christianity. There were long periods of drinking involved. Puritans condemned Christmas revelery. Things gradually did calm down to something closer to what we have today. Father Christmas transformed to Santa Claus. The tradition started to become more about family and giving. Dickens's work helped push this narrative.

The book was successful, but the production was expensive. The following few years, he produced additional Christmas novellas that made him huge amounts of money. They were well received at the time, but did not have the long term impact as the original. He later stopped the novellas and focussed on his novels. He also wrote for newspapers (though he took perhaps a bit too much control - especially in defense of his failing marriage.) 

A Christmas Story

I have seen so many different versions of this story that I thought I knew it well. Alas, I didn't the actual work is a darker ghost story than many of the movie versions. It does still follow the basic story line as Scrooge learns that his love of money does not make him a loved person.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby came from a well-to-do family. His father died, leaving him, his sister and mother to fend for themselves. They travel to Nicholas's uncle for help. However, the Uncle, Ralph is not keen to help them. They struggle with various types of employment, and discover that the Uncle is connected with various nere-do-wells who are "white color scammers".  They work through many odd jobs, including getting some renown as a playwright and performer. They finally end up in a comfortable situation at the end, while uncle meets a bad end.

The book has many characters and goes on for a long time. Every now and then, I found some interesting parts, but for the most part I had trouble following what was going on. There are a lot of views of 19th century society and various people. Maybe it would be better if I had a keen interest in England at the time.

The Old Curiosity Shop

Some people do stuff. Bad things happen. Then they die. The kid ends up doing well for himself at the end. There is a lot of detail in the middle.

Hard Times

Why do I bother reading Dickens? I had to read a few of his works in school and never really grasped any. Hard Times is now different. There is a girl who's dad is in the circus. There are some other poor people. They do a bunch of stuff. Luckily the book is short for a Dickens book.