Christmas Carol

Rating:
Summary: make it an annual tradition
Review: I'll not insult you all by describing the action of this classic novella, nor belabor the lesson taught. I'm sure even Mowgli the Jungle Boy must have heard this story once a year growing up in the jungle. But with all the TV and movie and cartoon and Muppet iterations (the best of which remains the 1951 Alastair Sim movie version), when's the last time you went back and actually read the original book?

Dickens is, of course, a wonderful author and earlier generations read everything that he wrote. Today, however, you read an obligatory novel or two in High School, breath a sigh of relief that's over and then blithely ignore him along with the rest of the ancients. But, as a reacquaintance with A Christmas Carol will remind you, he remains pretty accessible and his novels are often quite fun. What's more, there's even a Reading Version (available online) of the story that Dickens condensed himself for his numerous public readings of the tale. It's perfect for reading aloud to the family.

Here's just a sample of the prose to entice you:

On Scrooge before: Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

and Scrooge after: Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

We, all of us, have a tendency to let the classics become so encrusted that we take them for granted and forget how good they really are; if this has happened for you with A Christmas Carol, do yourself a favor and dig out a copy and reread it this Holiday Season. I bet it becomes an annual tradition.

GRADE: A+

Rating:
Summary: make it an annual tradition
Review: I'll not insult you all by describing the action of this classic novella, nor belabor the lesson taught. I'm sure even Mowgli the Jungle Boy must have heard this story once a year growing up in the jungle. But with all the TV and movie and cartoon and Muppet iterations (the best of which remains the 1951 Alastair Sim movie version), when's the last time you went back and actually read the original book?

Dickens is, of course, a wonderful author and earlier generations read everything that he wrote. Today, however, you read an obligatory novel or two in High School, breath a sigh of relief that's over and then blithely ignore him along with the rest of the ancients. But, as a reacquaintance with A Christmas Carol will remind you, he remains pretty accessible and his novels are often quite fun. What's more, there's even a Reading Version (available online) of the story that Dickens condensed himself for his numerous public readings of the tale. It's perfect for reading aloud to the family.

Here's just a sample of the prose to entice you:

On Scrooge before: Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

and Scrooge after: Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

We, all of us, have a tendency to let the classics become so encrusted that we take them for granted and forget how good they really are; if this has happened for you with A Christmas Carol, do yourself a favor and dig out a copy and reread it this Holiday Season. I bet it becomes an annual tradition.

GRADE: A+

Rating:
Summary: A tale of redemption from another time.
Review: This edition of Charles Dickens classic is doubly wonderful in its timeless tale of redemption as well as the wonderful illustrations executed by American artist Everett Shinn. In no way either slick or modern, when one is handed the book, it seems as you are holding an artifact from another time; a time of coal fires, slate roofs, horses in the streets, a time that predates the sad state of comercialism that permeates contemporary Christmas season. In its simplicity of story and its fine nostalgic illustrations it becomes a treasure to be handed down through one generation to the next.Hope dwells here.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificently illustrated.
Review: This version of the Dicken's classic is magnificently illustrated by one of America's foremost artists.