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Wednesday, December 23, 2020

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens


We read A Christmas Carol for our book club this month.  Books have been delayed through the library, so we wanted to make sure that we had a book to read.  We’ve now set up books through summer so we can order books ahead of time.  Have you had to make any changes with book club due to COVID?

 A Christmas Carol is a class story and I’ve reviewed it a few times on this blog.  I’m not going to go through the synopsis again, but I noticed this time that the version I’ve been reading since childhood was abridged!  I read the full version this time.  It’s such a short novel, I’m not sure why they abridged it.  All I could think of that they took out is that Dickens is VERY descriptive about food.  I loved the description.    The kindle version I read was a Penguin classic version and I really liked the introduction.  It gave great information about Charles Dickens and his Christmas novels.

 In book club, we noted that the book gets quite dark, when the third spirit shows people bartering over Scrooge’s belongings.  It was sad that people took the blankets and clothes from his dead body. 

 A Christmas Carol is such a part of our culture now with plays, musicals, movies, TV shows, cartoons, audiobooks, kids’ books, retellings, etc.  It’s amazing.  My personal favorite is Mickey’s Christmas Carol and I also love the 1938 movie staring Reginald Owen.  Dickens usually wrote such long novels, it is funny that his most endearing book is one of his shortest.

 What are your thoughts about Christmas Carol?

 Book Source:  I read an antique version I bought years ago and a kindle Penguin classic version I bought from Amazon.

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