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Rating: 
Summary: Very moving stories and a great publishing house
Review: Dickens' Christmas Books might be some of his most overlooked works, except for, of course, "A Christmas Carol." But in these stories he has captured the season's spirits of reflection and faith better than any other work I've read. "A Christmas Carol" is an acknowledged masterpiece; "The Chimes" and "The Battle of Life" are particularly moving as well. Four of these five stories bring me to tears by their ends.I started in 1991 to read one story per year in the published sequence, (for Christmas 2000, I'm reading The Haunted Man again) and this has made December and its holidays more enjoyable and meaningful for me. I hope to continue the cycle and look forward to reading "this year's Christmas story" aloud to my family as my kids grow up. Oxford Press/World's Classics publishes excellent quality paperbacks, and they do justice here to Dickens' powerful works. I highly recommend this work (and especially this publisher) to anyone; if you're looking for "A Christmas Carol", get this volume of all the Christmas Stories and enjoy even more of Dickens' masterful ability to weave the human condition into such moving short stories.
Rating:
Summary: Very moving stories and a great publishing house
Review: Dickens' Christmas Books might be some of his most overlooked works, except for, of course, "A Christmas Carol." But in these stories he has captured the season's spirits of reflection and faith better than any other work I've read. "A Christmas Carol" is an acknowledged masterpiece; "The Chimes" and "The Battle of Life" are particularly moving as well. Four of these five stories bring me to tears by their ends. I started in 1991 to read one story per year in the published sequence, (for Christmas 2000, I'm reading The Haunted Man again) and this has made December and its holidays more enjoyable and meaningful for me. I hope to continue the cycle and look forward to reading "this year's Christmas story" aloud to my family as my kids grow up. Oxford Press/World's Classics publishes excellent quality paperbacks, and they do justice here to Dickens' powerful works. I highly recommend this work (and especially this publisher) to anyone; if you're looking for "A Christmas Carol", get this volume of all the Christmas Stories and enjoy even more of Dickens' masterful ability to weave the human condition into such moving short stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed in the presentation
Review: The hardcover version of this book that I received was unacceptable. Peppered throughout the text of the five stories were the original illustrations. This would have been lovely if not for the fact that each illustration page also contained text from the original edition. This text was in a different typeface and format and did not match up in any way with the text of the story. The text on these pages was completely random ... in some cases starting and ending mid-sentence. The stories, of course, are classic Dickens and wonderful. But I found this printing defect so outrageous that I was unable to give the book as a gift, as I had intended. In fact, I returned it.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed in the presentation
Review: The hardcover version of this book that I received was unacceptable. Peppered throughout the text of the five stories were the original illustrations. This would have been lovely if not for the fact that each illustration page also contained text from the original edition. This text was in a different typeface and format and did not match up in any way with the text of the story. The text on these pages was completely random ... in some cases starting and ending mid-sentence. The stories, of course, are classic Dickens and wonderful. But I found this printing defect so outrageous that I was unable to give the book as a gift, as I had intended. In fact, I returned it.
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