Pages

About Me and My Blog and Amazon Store

My photo
Langley, BC, Canada
I love to read. I love books. I like to talk about books and recommend them. I read everything including cereal boxes and junk mail! I heard once that if you're not reading at least 3 books at a time you're not reading enough! This blog will keep track of the books I've read and whether or not I liked them. It will be a little bit of everything from Christian fiction to Science fiction and fantasy. Feel free to participate by suggesting books to review and giving your comments. Occasionally I am given free books by Publishers in exchange for a review. I am not told how to review them or compensated in any way for the review.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Beginning of the 2012 Dickens Challenge

Before I begin my reviews I just want to mention that I found 2 great biographies to use as references on Charles Dickens. The first is by GK Chesterton called simply Charles Dickens. While not exactly a contemporary of Dickens, Chesterton lived a few years after him and completely understands the life and times in which Dickens wrote. Chesterton also has an interesting take on the faith of Dickens that we will explore a bit as we go along. The second book is by a modern day biographer named Jane Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist. Her book is called Charles Dickens: A Life. She explores Dickens from a more modern perspective and examines his works with a more modern day literary approach. Both authors bring different perspectives to Dickens life and works and I’m enjoying reading them. I’ll do reviews of these books when I’ve finished them.

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. Early on he showed talent for acting and writing and his father often made him perform for guests. He was born into a moderately wealthy home and enjoyed some of the finer things in life. His Father lost his fortune and Charles was sent to the factory to work. He hated it. I found this an interesting fact about Dickens as it gave him context to be able to write authoritatively in either an aristocratic voice or in the voice of poverty as he had experienced both.

I’m about half way through The Pickwick Papers and will do my best to have a review of that book along with some more information about Dickens before the end of January. Stay tuned.

1 comment:

  1. Yahooo! I'm looking forward to obtaining an enhanced education by reading your Dickens posts. I must say, I LOVE every single quote I have ever read attributed to G.K.Chesterton. Funny, it never occured to me to actually read one of his books. Hmmmm

    ReplyDelete