Book #17: Little Dorrit by Charles Dickins

Book #17: Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Ranking Dickens

            At this point in the challenge, Charles Dickens seems like an old friend. If you need a refresher, I have already read David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities. Finally, I have made it to Little Dorrit, the last Dickens’ novel I have to read for awhile. I have previously mentioned that Dickens is not the best author to binge read and his novels are best read with a decent amount of space between them. However, since I am extremely stubborn, I made myself read the books on this list in the order they appear in Gilmore Girls episodes and ended up reading these four in the span of six months. This was exhausting because Dickens isn’t exactly light reading. I suppose this is why Dickens’ novels were often originally published in monthly installments such as the case with Little Dorrit. Part of me sees this as smart as it keeps the reader engaged and wanting more, but it also drags out the process. Dickens isn’t like an episode of Scandal; you don’t necessarily have the desire to eagerly await the next installment with a big glass of wine.

            Out of the four Dickens books I have read so far, my rankings stand as: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit. I believe that Little Dorrit is behind David

Copperfield merely because I read it afterwards. If I read Little Dorrit before David Copperfield, I probably would have liked it more. Most likely, I was burnt out from reading so much Dickens that by the time I came to this book I was just done with him. A lot of the themes and troupes Dickins uses in Little Dorrit, he does so much better in his other books. For example, the main female character of Amy “Little” Dorrit is reminiscent of Dora in David Copperfield. Little Dorrit’s father spends most of his life imprisoned similar to Lucie’s father in A Tale of Two Cities. Little Dorrit and her father are close in a similar manner to Lucie and her father. Arthur Clennam’s “mother” is similar in nature to the mean Mrs. Havisham in Great Expecatations. Furthermore, Amy’s older sister Fanny treats her the same way Pip’s older sister treats him. If Dickens’ other novels were not so great (he really did himself in on this one), maybe Little Dorrit would have stood a chance with me.

Money, Money, Money! (Yes, I am quoting an ABBA song…)

Since Dickens’ is often making a social commentary about money and class in his novels, I thought it be a convenient time to mention my new obsession: Downton Abbey. I know, I am about seven years too late to the party and am going off on a complete tangent here. Everybody has seen this show years ago, but TOO BAD I just started watching it now. I don’t know why I was so resistant to it for so long (there is my stubbornness again) because it is extremely addicting. But clouded under all the drama is a commentary on the British class system and money…just like Dickens! This shows how certain themes and motifs are used continuously throughout story telling. Also, reading Dickens and watching Downton Abbey at the same time made me feel very British and makes me yearn for England. I’ve been there once for a Shakespeare study tour (you’ll hear all about this when we read all that Shakespeare! Yay!) and want to go back desperately. But the more English works I read and more English television shows I watch, the more I attempt to speak in a British accent. I am so sorry to all my friends who have to put up with this. My sister tells me "Leigh, your British accent is you just speaking faster in a higher octave." Sigh....

Gilmore Boys

Since Little Dorrit is centered around a father and daughter relationship, I thought it would be a good time to bring up the father-daughter relationships in Gilmore Girls. We always focus on the mother-daughter relationships in the show, but the father-daughter ones are just as strong. Lorelei and Richard have a complex relationship but at the core, both would do anything for the other. Richard’s presence is huge over the course of the series and his death is omnipresent in the revival. Rory and Christopher’s relationship is not explored as in depth. Christopher is present in Rory’s life, but her loyalties usually side with her mother as she was the one who raised her. I would argue that Luke is more of a father figure to Rory. After all, he is the one that feeds her the most. I feel very lucky that I have such a good relationship with my father; I always have. 

Fun fact: In October 2011, The Guardian released the results of a poll in which readers voted for their favorite Dickens’ novel. Great Expectations won (no surprise, it is pretty great) followed by Bleak House (I’ve never read it, but one of my college English professors always raved about it). David Copperfield won third which surprises me and A Tale of Two Cities made it at four. Little Dorrit was ranked around 11 which isn’t too surprising as many people haven’t heard of it nor is it extremely memorable. It seems that many people had a similar opinion as I did.

Charles, my friend, it has been a fun six months. I've enjoyed (sort of) your stories of poor orphans, imprisoned fathers, and women with fetishes for doppelgängers. But, now, it is time to return to your admirer Leo Tolstoy and finish reading Anna Karenina. Wish me luck!  

Pictures

1.http://www.loyalbooks.com/image/detail/Little-Dorrit.jpg

2.https://a.wattpad.com/cover/111850375-352-k786598.jpg

3. http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/downtonabbey/images/8/83/Downton-Abbey-series-2-cast-promo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131128023506

Book #16 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

            I did it. I read all 1,215 pages of Tolstoy’s Russian masterpiece. Although, I would not call this book a masterpiece by any means. Honestly, it was one of the most boring and difficult books I have ever read. It was all over the place and inconsistent and just too long for its own sake. It would not surprise me if the only reason this book is considered a “classic” and remembered is because it is one of the longest books ever written.

            We are still sitting in Rory’s first class at Chilton where the teacher rambles off a list of works in order to compare how English society influenced Russian society in the 19^th century, specifically in literature. I assume that this is a history class and literature is being used as an example. And Mr. Medina is Rory’s English teacher (and Lorelai’s future love interest) and this man is clearly not him. The teacher says to the class: “As Tolstoy commenced writing both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Count Leo would turn to..” Paris responds with David Copperfield. It is not shocking, then, that if I disliked David Copperfield that I also disliked War and Peace. I am shocked, though, that these novels are being discussed in a tenth grade English class. I can tell you that my classes very rarely go this way. The tenth graders in this class must be some form of robots as many of my students claim they have never read a book let alone know that Tolstoy was influenced by Dickens.

            When I started reading War and Peace, I was intimidated and worried how much it would impact my fun reading (I usually have two books going at once), but somehow I got through it. I found the book difficult to follow for several reasons. 1. I was reading it in translation. Obviously, War and Peace was originally written in Russian so some aspects of the novel are bound to be lost in translation. The translation I read was very good, but I had to read a lot of footnotes to understand what was going on. 2. This book didn't know what it wanted to be. We claim War and Peace is a novel, but it is not. It tries to be a novel, a historical account, a philosophical discussion, and a poem all at once. Even Tolstoy said it is “not a novel, even less it a poem, and still less a historical context.” It seems to me that Tolstoy felt whatever he felt like at the moment in order to create the longest book he could. I think it is great that he wrote what he wanted to, but that doesn’t mean other people want to read it. So that brings me to this question: Does anybody out there call War and Peace their favorite book? Do they take it out when they are feeling sad to make them feel better? Is it the one they eagerly tell their friends about and urge them to read? Someone please tell me because I would really like to know the answer to this question

Now, I don’t really feel like rambling on about this book since it was tedious enough to read it so here is a list of my random thoughts:

 - Tolstoy had his wife copy the manuscript for this book seven times. Let’s do the math here: 1215 pages X 7 = 8505 pages. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

- I have a strange love of footnotes. I don’t know why…but even that couldn’t save this book for me.

- I had a lot of flashbacks to my AP European history class during my junior year of high school. Some of those were good memories, while others were just plain stressful.

- At one point in the novel, one character tortured another character by slitting his nostrils. My response was “Whaaaaaaa?”

- Just because something is bigger does not always mean it is better. As I tell my students, just because you write more does not mean that their essay is going to get an A. This book shows that more words does not equal a better book. 

Next Book: Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. My last Dickens for a while! Whooohooo!!!!

Pictures

Book Cover: http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320544190i/290979._UY200_.jpg

Image http://7-themes.com/data_images/collection/1/4426035-war-and-peace-wallpapers.png

Book #15: The Shining by Stephen King

I know I said that the next book would be War and Peace, but it has taken me awhile to get through it. This is partially because I’ve been reading other books while reading it (I know! I should just suck it up and power through!). I read a chapter of War and Peace, I read a chapter of something else, and so on. So I decided to continue the challenge as I read this huge monster of a book, especially because the next book on the list was Stephen King’s The Shining (a fun The Shining. I have seen countless of other classic horror films, but never got around to seeing this one. You know, based on this blog, you probably think I haven’t read or seen much of anything…I promise you that I have!

read!). Anybody who claims to be one of my friends knows that I love a good scary story. Horror movies, in particular, are my favorite. It may come to a shock to you, then, that I have never seen the movie version of

            I first read The Shining about ten years ago when I was a sophomore year in high school. Geez, I am old. Wow. Because it had been so long, I decided to reread it. I remember reading it the first time and not being blown away. I wasn’t sure if this was because I was too young to appreciate, didn’t quite understand it, or just wasn’t a fan. Before reading it this time, I finally sat down and watched the movie. I enjoyed the movie, but it is one that I only need to watch every ten years or so. I can understand why it is a classic and why it is a Gilmore favorite. It is actually the movie of The Shining that Lorelai mentions when she is on the phone with her mother talking about installing a DSL line (oh, the days before wifi). However, because it was a book first, of course, it is on the list. This brings me to my first topic:

Book vs. Movie

            Whenever it comes down to the book vs. movie debate, I usually side with the book. 99.9% of the time, the book is better than the movie or television adaptation. There is a very short list of movies that are better than their source of adaptation. That list, in my eyes, is Bridget Jones’s Diary, Twilight (because you can visually see the abs), and Harry Potter. I’m sure there are a few more, but I’ll let you know as I think of them.

            In this situation, I do think that the novel The Shining is better than the movie The Shining. Watching the movie and reading the novel in such quick succession made me more certain in

my opinion. Both are enjoyable, but there are major differences which helped me make my decision. For one, the main character Jack is presented in very different lights. In the movie, it is made clear from very early on that something is wrong with Jack. The movie presents this as something that is inherently within Jack before the story starts and that the evil that manifests in the character was present there all along. In the novel, King presents Jack as a flawed human character. He is not evil when the story begins, but is a man struggling with alcoholism, losing his job, and the tension in his marriage. He is not perfect by any means, but he is NOT an inherently evil man. King makes it abundantly clear that Jack loves his wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny. The movie makes Jack extremely unlikeable from very early on making it hard to sympathize with him and, therefore, not making us feel any sympathy for Jack as he loses himself. The novel makes Jack's inner turmoil evident to the reader. We learn about how his father abused him and why he succumbed to alcohol. We see how the voices of the ghosts of the hotel slowly take over Jack’s mind so that he eventually gives his soul up to the hotel. The movie makes it clear that Jack is the bad guy while the novel presents the hotel as the bad guy.

            This difference is one of the reasons why Stephen King dislikes the critically acclaimed

movie adaptation of his work. King is not shy about voicing his ideas and opinions to the world. This is something we see to this day as he was recently blocked by Donald Trump on Twitter. I can only imagine how difficult it is for an author to give up authority of their work. If I ever write a book (and mark my words, I will write a book!) and it is turned into either a movie or TV series, I’d want to be intimately involved in the process.

The Uncanny

Freud coined the term the “uncanny” which refers to something that is familiar, but slightly off. It is unsettling because it is so close to something we know yet there is part of it that does not fit our normal schema for the world. This is my paraphrase of what the uncanny means and it explains why scary stories are so popular, specifically Stephen King’s stories. If you look at most of King’s works, what makes them the most unsettling is that the horror comes from something that connects to our human world. Sure, he includes ghosts, vampires, aliens, etc. but these are all rooted in something that connects to human nature. What is scary about The Shining isn’t just that it is about a haunted hotel, but it is that it takes a normal man and takes him to the edge of madness. We know that ghosts are not real (debatable), but losing your mind is. What scares us is not the supernatural, but what the supernatural represents. Although, the cheap scares in slasher movies can be a bit scary for some of us.

Random Thoughts

- I once tried to trick a guy into watching a scary movie with me. This did not end well as he opened the door, saw the television scream, and yelled “HELL NO” as he slammed the door. I had to earn my forgiveness by giving him all the Kit-Kats in my Halloween candy mix.

- The most haunted room in the Overlook Hotel is room 217. My classroom is 217. Coincidence? I think not. I always joked that my classroom was haunted because the TV would randomly turn on and things would fall off the walls. Now it makes a lot more sense.

- King takes inspiration for The Shining from his own struggle with alcoholism and parenting. It is often said that you write what you know. This makes sense, but writing what you know tends to get you in trouble sometimes. I’ve been there.

- One of my favorite author feuds is between Stephen King and James Patterson. Personally, I like both authors for different reasons. However, it is extremely interesting to read about. I think it should be the next season of that FX show about Feuds.

- Colorado is the setting of this novel so I have to ask: Why is Colorado so popular? At least two of my good friends have moved out there and several other people I know have done so as well. Of all the places I would move to, Colorado would not be first on the list.

- Since this book is about a psychic boy, I would like to share that my mother believes that certain members of our family are slightly psychic. But, she likes to point out that I did not inherit this gift.

- The Shining has a sequel: Dr. Sleep. It is about a grown up Danny. I wonder how it compares to The Shining. I’ll let you know.

Pictures

Movie Poster:http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/the-shining-1980/large_zc5y5OwKSV9MDXpfWxwrOjyRHsq.jpg

Book Cover:http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309974274i/231786._UY200_.jpg

Movie Still:http://www.heyuguys.com/images/2014/08/The-Shining.jpg

Meme:https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/86/ee/a0/86eea0092015a877a024271bed9a3ced.jpg

Book #14 A Tale of Two Cities

           For someone who was not well versed in Charles Dickens, I have quickly caught up during the past three months. Normally, I wouldn’t think Dickens is the best author to binge read (actually, I’m not sure it's a good idea to binge read any author because then you will get tired of them), but I am glad I am catching up on reading these classics. Especially A Tale of Two Cities!

Out of the four Dickens novels mentioned in Rory’s class during the second episode, this was the novel I was most looking forward to reading for several reasons. One, I remember that I really enjoyed the episode of Wishbone that was based off of the novel. My love of literature started really early. Two, I had heard the famous opening line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” many different times (pun intended). I had to see the source material. And, three, this book came recommended by a good friend. I was told to prepare to have my heart broken so, of course, that just made me want to read it more.

            A Tale of Two Cities was different from the two previous Dickens novels I’ve read in that it had a clear plot trajectory rather than just a character study. David Copperfield and Great Expectations both focused on a coming of age story of a young boy and the different people that helped him grow up. However, A Tale of Two Cities is criticized because the characters were flat and lacked the depth seen in Dickens’ other works. I could see that as I read, especially with Lucie. Honestly, she was kind of boring and it seemed like the only reason so many men wanted to marry her was for her golden hair and her purity. Pffffffff. Golden hair doesn’t get you anywhere. Lemme tell you. But, Lucie is at the heart of the novel and a lot of the action is centered around her so I can’t bash her too much.

            The two male leads, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, are also criticized for their lack of depth. However, I must argue that they are written this way because it is their actions that speak the loudest. This novel is not meant to be like David Copperfield or Great Expectations. It is meant to capture a specific period in history and these two men epitomize the terror during this time. Of course, there is also a conspiracy theory that Darnay and Carton are Charles Dickens combined; that he put some of himself into both of these characters. I’m not so sure of that, but I do know that authors insert themselves into their characters whether consciously or not. The characters in this novel are not as dynamic as some of Dickens’ others, but they control the plot which is the heart of the story.

            Every good love story has a love triangle. That’s why Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Bridget Joneses’ Diary are such popular books and movies (I know that last one doesn’t really connect with the first two, but, trust me, it has the perfect love triangle). But, is it really a love triangle when one man does not make his intentions known? It seems that from very early on that Lucie and Charles Darnay were meant to be and the central couple of the text. However, Sydney Carton is slowly revealed to harbor a secret love for Lucie. He never takes the chance to tell Lucie how he feels because (1) he doesn’t feel like he is good enough, (2) he hasn’t found his own purpose in life, and (3) Lucie and Charles Darnay are already madly in love. But did Lucie ever have the chance to love Sydney? He never put himself out there or revealed his feelings to her. Maybe he thought he was doing her a favor because he didn’t think he was good enough. But he never gave himself the chance to see if she could return those feelings.

            It is pretty clear that I fall on the Sydney Carton team for the love triangle. I tend to side with the underdog in these situations. I really did like Charles Darnay and would easily claim him as my literature crush for this novel, but Sydney was just more interesting. Sydney had flaws that made him more real to me and unrequited love always makes me feel some sort of way. What really made love him was his action at the end of the novel. SPOILER ALERT. Sydney made the ultimate sacrifice him and gave up his life so Lucie could be happy with someone that wasn’t him. Ultimately, her happiness and safety was more important to him than his own life. And, with that, my heart was broken just like my friend said. Lucie would never know how much Sydney loved him, but his sacrifice saved many lives. I am just going to sob for a minute over this.

Other Thoughts:

- One of my favorite lines was about Sydney Carton: “When he cared to talk, he talked well.” Such a simple line, but with a lot said. I always listen carefully to those who are quiet because when they talk, it is usually very insightful. I wish I was one of those people. Sometimes I am. Other times, I just have a tendency to babble.

- I find it funny that Charles Darnay tells Lucie’s father that he loves her and intends to marry her before he even mentions to Lucie that he loves her. I would find it very strange if a guy told my dad that he was in love with me and intended to marry me before I even had any inkling myself.

- So far, my ranking of Dickens’ works are 1. A Tale of Two Cities, 2. Great Expectations, 3. David Copperfield

Next Time:

            Rory’s teacher mentioned Dickens and these novels because their topic of discussion is the impact English culture had on Russian culture and thenceforth English literature on Russian literature. This will lead into our next book, War and Peace (that one is going to be a long ride), because Charles Dickens was Leo Tolstoy’s favorite author. Wish me luck as I make my way through this 1215 beast of a Russian novel! And now because everyone deserves to look at a puppy...

Images

- Book cover: http://conversationsabouther.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities__91605_zoom.jpg

- Comic cover: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/CC_No_06_A_Tale_of_Two_Cities.jpg/220px-CC_No_06_A_Tale_of_Two_Cities.jpg

-Wishbone: http://images.paperbackswap.com/l/59/3059/9780836823059.jpg