Christmas Reading '10: A Christmas Carol

[Scheherazade]

This year, we will be reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Please post your comments and questions in this thread.

[Paulclem]

What a fine book. I'm looking forward to a re-read.

[HarperR]

Sure. I haven't read it in a while and need a brush up. Plus it was amazing, haha, so I'm looking forward to a re-read :)

[faithosaurus]

I just re-read it and it's just as good as the first time I read it when I was little :)

I was amazed at how many details I couldn't remember.

[Paulclem]

I've just read the first part -Marley's Ghost.

The description and detail is brilliant. What is interesting too is the unorthodox nture of the Christianity espoused. Spirits of the Dead wandering the earth. I presume that this is a kind of vision of pugatory, but tempered with Dicken's own views on social problems.

[L.M. The Third]

Now I'd have to reread some parts, but it is a purgatory in which they may/must atone for their selfish lives, isn't it? But does it give any clues to what happens to the 'good' in this world of Dickens' creation? Or to what hope there is for the wandering spirits when they have atoned?

[AuntShecky]

Here's what yours fooly had to say about "A Christmas Carol" some Christmases past ago:


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40369

That original posting ^ has a slight error, in that the material which Dickens reportedly as a source came from an earlier work by Washington Irving, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq., also the source, incidentally, for many of the yuletide traditions adopted in the U.S. during the 19th century. The complete chapter is available online here:

http://www.*********.com/chapter-6033/The-Sketchbook-of-Geoffrey-Crayon-Washington-Irving

[sinoorigin]

I haven't read this book, I would like to know how about it?