BOOK REPORT: The Dicken's Christmas Novels

This book report will have a slightly different format as it actually is a review of 5 short novels by Charles Dickens.  I think I bit off more than I thought as 75 pages of Dickens seems to somehow equate to 150 of other authors.  Anyway, I got through it and I'm glad I did.  Next Christmas however, I might read just one of them, or move on to his Christmas short stories... time will tell.

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Title:                                           A Christmas Carol

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1843

My Rating:                                  5 out of 5 stars  ( excellent )

Backcover Description
One of the best-loved and most quoted stories of "the man who invented Christmas"-English writer Charles Dickens-A Christmas Carol debuted in 1843 and has touched millions of hearts since. Cruel miser Ebeneezer Scrooge has never met a shilling he doesn't like. . .and hardly a man he does. And he hates Christmas most of all. When Scrooge is visited by his old partner, Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come, he learns eternal lessons of charity, kindness, and goodwill. Experience a true Victorian Christmas!

My Thoughts
We all know and love this classic, so I won't go into too much detail on it or give the story as it should be well known.  This was the second time I've read this one, but it has been a VERY long time since the first   reading.   I didn't remember many of the smaller details about the ghost of Christmas past but there were not a lot of surprises otherwise.

This is a classic and deserves to be.  I wish I could say the same thing about the other stories. 

Speaking of...

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Title:                                           The Chimes

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1844

My Rating:                                  2 out of 5 stars  ( confusing )


Backcover Description
The Chimes tells the story of Toby Veck, or Trotty, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors, but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells.


My Thoughts
This story was very confusing to me.  As the description above states, the main character, Trotty is a porter who is required to stand in the cold, waiting for a job to come his way; the chimes of the church near by  keep him company with their song and in general he is very optimistic and happy with life.  He has some interaction with some stuffy rich folk who refer to poor people as "those people who will do well to know their place and should find happiness in the daily chores they do for us; leave living a full to us" (paraphrasing) .


Maybe I was just sleepy, but as I was reading this, I was expecting the rich people to learn lesson ala scrooge through Trotty, but for some reason Trotty was the forsaken one who gets visited by the Spirits of Time via the Chimes.   I liked Trotty and to see him tormented like this was A) unexpected and B) kind of off putting... the rich people who look down their noses at Trotty don't learn a thing....


It didn't help that the middle section of book was obfuscated english at its best.  I had to read 3-4 pages 3-4 times trying to understand what had occured in the story.  Trotty gets called to the church tower by the chimes, goes to the top, sees the gremlins of the bells (very cool image btw....) and lectured on Times role in the life of man and what man should and should not do with the time it has... ok... fine, but then you see an image of trotty at the base of the tower, dead, 9 years in the future and now Trotty is off on a Scrooge like voyeur tour of his life...   


I just didn't get the theme and felt like I was constantly re-reading entire sections trying to figure out what was going on.


I am going to re-read this entire story next year, but until then, this gets a two star rating for the incoherent story.

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Title:                                           The Cricket on the Hearth

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1845

My Rating:                                  4.5 out of 5 stars  ( charming )


Backcover Description:
As this tale begins it paints a beautiful picture of a happy household and of 19th century English country life. The arival of a mysterious stranger threatens to shatter this harmony. A masterful story of love and loyalty.


My Thoughts
This is a charming, feel good story for Christmas.  It could be called almost too sentimental at times but it works for this story.  Dickens does a great job painting a portrait of blissful , playful domesticity including a lucky cricket who lives on the hearth, warming the hearts of the occupants. 


The conflict comes a bit out of left field, but it is a relatively smooth transition and  settles down quickly.  


I really liked this story and it will be one which I plan to read again; I recommend it to anyone wanting a heartwarming Christmas story instead of being scared into a moral and righteous life as the previous two books. 


As an interesting side note, after I read The Cricket on the Hearth I was reading various articles on it and found out that this story was actually a more popular on stage than A Christmas Carol was for a long time.  I am actually surprised that I haven't heard or seen of a production of this before

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Title:                                           The Battle of Life

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1846

My Rating:                                  4 out of 5 stars  ( nice )


Back-cover Description
The Battle of Life: A Love Story is the fourth of Dickens’ five Christmas books. It is worth mentioning that it is the only book out of five that does not deal with any supernatural elements. It is not a social novel and resolved with a romantic twist. The book is written in three parts, an uplifting tale of winning one of the many wars fought in the battle of life. The tale’s ending is a happy one, typical to all of Dickens books


My Thoughts
This was another light hearted story which differs slightly from the other stories by not including  any supernatural elements.  No ghosts, not spirit crickets showing all that life has to offer.  I thought this story was well done, the characters were very likable and the scene well established.   All the element were there for a great story, but it just fell a bit flat of being a timeless Christmas story.   


It was however very funny.  The two lawyers in the story have to be my favorite characters in all of the Dickens Christmas books and may enter into consideration for my obscure-historical-literary-reference halloween costume, (I would need a partner however).  Others in consideration so far are Prince Florizel from the Suicide Club stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and Prince Calaf from Turandot

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Title:                                            The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1848

My Rating:                                  3.5 out of 5 stars  ( nice )

Back-Cover Description
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1848, that concludes his series of five Christmas books. The story is more about the spirit of the holidays than about the holidays themselves. The tale centers on Professor Redlaw, a chemistry teacher who is constantly brooding over the grief caused by past wrongs done to him. Redlaw is haunted by a spirit who takes from him these painful memories, which leaves him unexpectedly bitter. Ultimately the conflict of the novella is resolved in an uplifting way which asserts the moral of the story. “That it is important to remember past sorrows and wrongs so that you can then forgive those responsible and, in doing so, unburden your soul and mature as a human being.”


My Thoughts
By the time I started to read this Christmas story, I was getting tired of Dicken's verbose language and heavy pronoun use.  But once I made it past the usual 10 page intro to the story, this one seemed ok.  


If I were to rank the five Christmas books from best to least favorite, this one would go in the 4 slot on the shelf, but it is a nice story.  Dickens brings back the supernatural element in this story via the Chemist's self-portrait phantom.  It also brings in a small primitive child like character which is the characters guide on his self-evaluation journey. 


The odd thing about this story is not that the main character goes through a transformational experience with a supernatural tour-guide, but that doesn't  occur during a dream like state independent the lives around them. (Ah, I woke up, what day is it?!)  In this story, the Chemist affects his surroundings and people while being haunted and rubs his negative mojo off on them.  There is a darker element to the story because of this and it makes the happy ending a bit more dramatic. 

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All in all, the stories were good.  I am glad I read all five, and I hope that maybe someone else might make room for these stories into their busy lives around Christmas.  

Info on my next book report

Hi everyone!


I just wanted to give a quick update on my next book.  I am reading all of the Christmas Books by Charles Dickens.  We all know and love A Christmas Carol, however,  I wasn't aware that he wrote four more short Christmas Novels.   Each one is about seventy-five pages and I plan to write one book report for all of them together, and count them as single book for the project.  

The Christmas books:

• A Christmas Carol (1843)
• The Chimes (1844)
• The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
• The Battle of Life (1846)
• The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848)

Jason

BOOK REPORT: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Title:         The Professor and the Madman

Author:      Simon Winchester

Original Copyright Date:          2005

My Rating:          3 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

My Thoughts:
The Professor and the Madman was an interesting look into a subject with which I was completely ignorant.  I always took dictionaries for granted and never really thought about how they were created.  I also thought that the Oxford English Dictionary was just another version of a dictionary similar to Webster's.  The OED as they call it across the pond is much more than a dictionary, it is an homage to every single word in the English language, its roots, it nuances of usage illustrated with sentences pulled from literature.  

Being non-fiction, there isn't much to say about symbolism or literary merit; although the author does a good job of developing the two main characters, James Murray the lexical geek editor of the OED and W.C. Minor, an Union army doctor in the Civil war; the madman who thought he was constantly being tormented in the night by little demons who would take him off to far off lands and make him do horrible things.

I did find sections of the book a bit dry as I don't seem to have a knack for philology or English lexicography.  While I did find the history of how the use of certain words outlined in the book interesting, the detailed discussions on roots and origin, etc  was lost on me. 

As a side note, fairly late in the book, another major contributer to the OED was mentioned who, by his own right was a kook.  Dr. Fitzedwald Hall, another American who ended up in India, falls in love with Sanskrit, moves to England, becomes a renowned professor of Sanskrit, and after a heated linguist argument with another Sanskrit scholar,  left in a huff to become a hermit.  It seems that, to be a major volunteer contributer to the OED, it seemed that you needed to be a little off and it would have been interesting to for this book to explore that further.

Overall, it was a fun read, full of sesquipedalian words (including sesquipedalian) that I had to look up in the dictionary... I guess James Murray would be proud!

BOOK REPORT: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Title:                                           The Life of Pi

Author:                                        Yann Martel

Original Copyright Date:          2004

My Rating:                 3.5 out of 5 stars  ( good )

Backcover Description:

Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam.  When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship.  Alas, the ship sinks-- and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a 450-pound Bengel tiger.  Soon the tiger dispatched all by Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?

My Thoughts

I can see how it would be a great book-club book as it is full of discussions on religion, zoology and is full of symbolism.  Of course, most of that symbolism is lost on me.  I've never been one to follow or read deeply into a lot of that unless I am in an academic setting where someone can guide the conversation.  There are even book club discussion questions in the back, most of which seemed to me to apply to a different book... oh, well.  I still enjoyed the book. 

The book is divided into three main sections. Pi's religious life leading up to the ship sinking, the ark of a life boat, and the recovery.  Let's look at each one individually.

The first section follows "Pi" from a small child until sixteen when his family emigrates to Canada.  The bulk of this is detailing Pi's spiritual life as he becomes a full fledged Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim.  I really don't know what this adds to the story other than articulating that each of the major religions has beautiful elements in which Pi can take comfort.  The author even has the three spiritual leaders of each religion meet at one point to heatedly debate the pros and cons of each religion.   As he is growing spiritually, Pi is also living amongst the animals in a zoo; his father being the zookeeper.  Here the author outlines some of the basics of animal behavior and the human element imposed upon the animals. "Look behind the curtain to see the most dangerous animal in the zoo", only to have the patron see a mirror behind the curtain.  

The second section details the sinking cargo ship and the after deadly aftermath.  This was by far the most engaging part in the book and could have stood alone with just a brief introduction and conclusion as an excellent novella, ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor with a tiger added for more "ummph"  (Funny, I read that novella on my trip to India, the read this novel on my way to Oregon, which is closer to Canada than I currently am, which was Pi's destination.... wow....that's deep.. ;) )  The author does a good job keeping the story believable that a teenager and tiger could coexist without too much of a stretch of the imagination.  I do find it odd that the emphasis placed in the first section on religion/spirituality was basically absent in this part.  Every now and then, it would be mentioned that  Pi would pray or mix the major figures of each on in an amusing yet non-offensive exclamation.  

The third section wraps up the story, albeit a bit flatly.  Once on land again, Pi recounts the story to some Japanese representatives of the shipping company who are looking into the cause of the sinking ship.  Here, the main point seemed to be that the Japanese representatives don't believe such a fantastical story and the philosophical discussion which followed. 

I really did like this book; it was an entertaining quick read which was great on my flight to Portland.  I think a group discussion would have been helpful to get some of the deeper meanings from the book but it was still enjoyable from the level I read it.  
   

BOOK REPORT: Feed by M.T. Anderson

Title:                                            Feed

Author:                                        M.T. Anderson 

Original Copyright Date:          2002

My Rating:                       4 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson creates a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire ushering us into an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.


My Thoughts:
Wow. That was a literary transition from Robert Louis Stevenson.  I started Feed about 6 minutes after finishing the short story "Markheim" by the aforementioned Stevenson.  The first page of Feed seemed to have, like, every other word, as like, ",like" or something.  Of course that was on purpose.  Feed is a cautionary tale about a society where the computers are linked directly to the brain at a very young age.  Instead of being used for "good and betterment" it functions just like any computer does today.  It is a vehicle for advertisements and social interaction.   It is just like, you know, having Facebook(tm) in your head ALL THE TIME, you know...  

The book is in the "young adult" section of the book store and I initially took the dumbed down language of the eighteen year old main character to be just that, the inner monologue of an eighteen year old.  But, I quickly learned that everyone spoke, like you know, like that and tthat M.T. Anderson knew what he was doing..  Everyone spoke the same, you know language, from the president down to the janitor.  

As I progressed through the book, I realized that there is a very deep subject here, and that is the dumbing down of the individual in the face of all the social media out there.  It really struck close to home.  In the world M. T. Anderson creates, every time a School or Cloud is mentioned it has a trademark symbol around it.  In this world, schools are corporate subsidiaries and clouds are a product.  Considering that this book was written in 2002, well before most of the social media addictions started, it hit very close to home.   

The back cover description nailed it fairly well saying this follows in the footsteps of Orwell, Burgess and Vonnegut, but I would say the biggest shoe it is trying to fill is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 

This was a really good book and I would recommend it to most anyone.

BOOK REPORT: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

Title:       The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

Author:                      Robert Louis Stevenson 

Original Copyright Date:             various

Original Publishing Date:  2009 (for this collection)

My Rating:             3.5 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Back Cover Description:
Idealistic young scientist Henry Jekyll struggles to unlock the secrets of the soul. Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate—and eliminate—human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the book has literary roots in Dostoevsky’s “The Double” and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson’s novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller.

This collection also includes some of the author’s grimmest short fiction: “Lodging for the Night,” “The Suicide Club,” “Thrawn Janet,” “The Body Snatcher,” and “Markheim.”

My Thoughts

This was an interesting collection of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I should have read this before Halloween as all of them are macabre tales. 

"Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a novella which I've heard about all my life, but had never read.  I guess a topic so well known  can easily lead to hyped expectations.  It was a good story, although, not as good as Stevenson's other works.  I can see the parallels to Crime and Punishment alluded to in the back cover descriptions, and Stevenson even makes reference to Dostoevsky's works in the work. 

"Lodging for the Night"  tells the story of a cold night turned bad in a small hut where a game of cards leads to a stabbing and the main character venturing out into the night to get away from the scene and tries to find shelter.

"The Suicide Club" is actually three related short stories which follows Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his adventures infiltrating a suicide club.  a place, where for 40 pounds, you play russian roulette. but instead of a bullet, you pull cards.  Whomever pulls the ace of spades is the target, if you pull the ace of clubs, you must be one who kills.  I thought these stories were great.  According to the preface, Robert Louis Stevenson wanted to recreate the "Thousand and One Arabian Nights" and created a collection of short stories in that vein. The Suicide Club is part of that collection.

"Thrawn Janet" was a difficult story to read.  It is essentially a campfire horror story told by a drunk scotsman in the 1700's in his native dialect.  I never had to look so many words up, including "Thrawn" which means crooked or twisted. 

"The Body Snatcher" is a story of a young doctor's apprentice who's main task is to collect bodies for the anatomist.  Most of the bodies brought to him are in the middle of the night in suspicious circumstances.  This story did lead to a new personal goal.  Not only do I need "Gentleman Adventurer and Philanthropist" on my future business cards, but "Bon Vivant" needs to be added.  It means, "A person with refined taste, especially one who enjoys superb food and drink."

"Markheim" is a short story about a man who kills a pawn shop owner on Christmas morning to rob him and his personal crisis which comes thereafter.  This story is very similar to Crime and Punishment, on 400 pages shorter. 

All in all, it was a good set of stories, but it took me longer to read than expected.  

Now, in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson, " Let me profit my idleness, and make haste on my next verse"

BOOK REPORT: A Long Long Way By Sebastian Barry

Title:                                 A Long, Long Way

Author:                             Sebastian Barry

Original Copyright Date:  2005

My Rating:                    4 out of 5 stars  (Beautifully Written )

Would Recommend to a friend?:   Yes

Back Cover Description:

"...Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war. In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front.  Once there he encounters violence on a scale he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and then camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side.  Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home...."

My Thoughts:

This was a beautifully written book; the language was absolutely stunning.  It walked the fine line between prose and poetry to perfection.  The subject matter however can be difficult at times.  It is war after all.  

The basic story is a good one.   A young lad goes off to war to make his father proud of him, finds a girl before he ships off to war, and deals with the horrors in the trenches of World War I. But the twist is the Irish revolt which starts up while he is away.  He has to deal with fighting in Belgium and at home, where he is the "enemy" in both places.  

Trench warfare, mustard gas, death, injury, mud, cold, and  rain seem to be surround every scene and never leaves the characters alone, even when they aren't on the front lines or in Belgium for that matter.  But throughout all that, the main character Willie, despite peeing his pants before most any battle, copes with this adversity with a grace and dignity that only men of yore seem to have. You know, the ones that get interviewed on TV shows reminiscing about The War, talking about the small details that got them through the atrocities that surrounded them:  A flower here, a song by a comrade there, a lady back home waiting for him, etc...  Willie is not always brave, but he never runs.  Each time he had to kill a German, it weighed heavily on his soul, despite the fact that he was being attacked and almost died himself.

Sebastian Barry does a great job moving the story forward without bogging it down in the details.  He provides more than enough detail to understand the motivations and driving forces for all the main characters without turning it into a thousand page Vanity Fair style epic which it probably could have been.

But enough of the story, lets get back to the prose, that is the real story here.  It is hard to give examples in this format because the author uses sweeping narrative instead of poignant little quotable nuggets to progress the themes throughout the book.  I remember whole scenes which were simply awe inspiring.  

For example.  In one scene, after a particularly brutal gas attack and hand to hand combat which left 800 of the 1200 front line soldiers dead; Willie's group is brought back to the reserver lines to recuperate.   The soldiers set up a small stage in a barn and hold a somewhat impromptu concert.  As I am reading it, I come to a paragraph which I think shows some of the beauty of the moment.  In this scene, the first performer gets up nervously and starts to sing: 

"The listeners were stilled because in the song there was a melody that brought from their own memories coloured hint and living sparks of the past.  The past was a valued thing bit it was also dangerous to them in the toxic wastelands of the war.  It needed a box of safety round it, and this small room for concerts was a good as they had found" 

However, this poignant scene goes on for several pages and I soon gave up trying write it down in my reading notebook and just wrote a page number down instead.  I felt the shelter and comfort that the soldiers felt.  I was wrapped up into the beauty "Ave Maria" as Willie sings it even though I personally only know the first few bars. I was there. Very few books have ever done that to me consistently throughout a book. 

This isn't to say that there aren't great quotes in the book. 

"The pith of sorrow was in the upshot a little seed of death" 

Thanks Tom for the recommendation and letting me borrow the book!