The Reading Corner is a place where books of all genres are examined and reviewed. Comments, questions and disagreement are welcomed. Grab some coffee and a comfy chair and make yourself at home.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Early mornings

I am usually a fan of them (within reason). This particular morning isn't really one I wanted to make friends with, since I don't have anything going on until noon, when Jonah is picking me up to take me home again. However, here I am, wide awake (well, awake anyway) and preparing to make myself the first of many cups of coffee.

A few more followers have showed up over the past few days, which is nice! I went from 8 to 11 all at once -hi, guys! How are you? Welcome to this corner of the Internet. I hope you know what you're in for. What brought you this way?

Book time:

Anyone else ever read "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens? I told Jonah yesterday that I like it better than I like "Great Expectations" -and that statement means very little. I've never been able to get into "GE." Perhaps this represents a failing on my part as a reader. I liked the Wishbone version, but whenever I actually go to read the book I hate it almost immediately. I'm not sure why.

So, yeah. "Hard Times" is better than that, although I'm still not sure how much or if I really like it. Fortunately, my good opinion isn't actually necessary. As long as I can analyze it effectively, I'm in the clear.

I think it's something about the way Dickens crowds descriptions with almost identical sentences and kind of beats parallel comparisons into the ground. For example, from "A Tale of Two Cities" -most people know "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and yet how many of us know that the rest of that paragraph is like half a page of that in the same format? It's brilliant -I won't deny that. It's a brilliant paragraph. But Dickens uses that same concept in almost every other thing he wrote (at least what people read academically). I know it's a part of Victorian writing, and Dickens was an amazing Victorian writer, but I feel like I'm reading the same story on repeat when he does that. It's bizarre.

What are your thoughts?

Sorry for the short post, I just got a Google Voice invite thing and I'm busy playing with it! :)

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