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Unlike most people I know, when I want to explore an authorīs work, I start from the least famous or scarcely known titles. Thatīs how I first chose The Battle of Life. Perhaps not a masterpiece, for sure; yet I highly regard it and strongly recommend it to anyone interested in a hilarious-dramatic-romantic book written by an excellent narrator.
Enjoy and share your opinions!
I am like most people taht you know. I read all of Dickens most popular books first. It will be a long time but I plan to read this in the future.
Mr. Snob,
My approach seems to vary. In one respect, I have no choice but to read what I inherited from my parents and grandparents library. In other words, I start with the great works left by them which leads me to ther works by those authors. War and Peace was included in their library. After reading War and Peace I became interested in Russian literature, butactually diverted to Dostoevsky in which case I built my way up to Brothers Karamazov;first starting with Notes From Undergorund followed by The Idiot.
Gilliatt
I've started with his last nine complete novels, in no particular order (ending with Dombey and Son, which I'm reading now), with a break for the holidays to read the Christmas books (which I finished Christmas eve). When I've finished Dombey and Son I'll move move on to the unfinished Mystery of Edmund Drood, then the first five novels, Childs History of England, American Notes, Letters From Paris, Short stories, and whatever else I can find.
As for 'The Battle of Life,' for the first time, I could not get behind the premise or moral of a Dickens story: A younger sister, deeply in love (though at first I thought she wasn't at all) with a man who loves her dearly, runs away from home - for years! - so that her older sister, who also loves the man (who used to love her also), might marry him after, in the younger sister's absence, she (the younger sister) expects, he revives his love for her (the older sister). It's not that it's convoluted, though it's certainly that, but that I don't approve of the maneuvering and manipulation of hearts, or the purpose behind it. Sorry Charles, not this time.
Not that I didn't enjoy reading it. Monsoirs and Madammes Snitchey and Craggs provided plenty of good Dickens fun to hold me through the rather weak plot.
My favorite Dickens novel so far is Our Mutual Friend. I was completely caught off guard. There I was, on a bus full of strangers on my way to work, suddenly weeping and laughing out loud. Embarrassing. Be careful where you read Dickens.
tnx, i will definitely consider reading it. i always start from the ones people recommend to me, and those are usually the best works