For the Summer of 2010 I read both Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens for English and a shortened version of the novella (although probably already short) Carmen for French. I'm going to choose to talk about A Tale of Two Cities because I just finished it the other night and because I finished Brave New World the first few days of Summer. Charles Dickens famed book started out really slow and boring for me. The whole first half of the book seemed like a collection of short stories jumping back between Britan and France, and I had a hard time seeing how they related. I also had trouble getting use to reading older English filled with quite a few outdated words. Once I got into the second half of the book (a bit before Charles Darnay makes his trip to France) everything started to come together for me. I began to figure out how characters were related, how events were related, and guesstimate where the story would progress from there. What started as kind of a boring romance book about nothing turned into a thriller-mystery by the end. So in short I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities; at least for the superficial reasons. I'm sure that are much more hidden themes and ideas that I may not have picked up on in the first read that will probably make the bookmore interesting (if there weren't it wouldn't be a classic I suppose). From what I've heard, Charles Dicken's depiction of the 'mob-rule' feeling of the day was perfect, and I definitely felt the characters' fear of being overheard, watched, and possibily denounced. But what I found even more interesting than that was the way Dickens intertwines and reveals how characters are related past and present in ways you never thought possible. For example, who could have ever predicted that the son of the man (nephew of Marquis) that imprisoned Doctor Manette in the Bastille for eighteen years would later become a family friend and marry his daughter? Another example would be Sydney Carton's sacrifice to face the Guillotine in place of Charles Barnay (so he could escape). Although admittidely I saw it coming, it is still a surprising end. One thing I both valued and hated about the book was Dicken's over-description of almost everything. At some points it is beneficial because it allows you to accurately imagine the place or person on par with what he imagined. At the same time, one has to remember that British authors at that time were paid by the word, and they therefore had a personal interest to over-describe even the most banal thing. Do I really need to know exactly (down to every button and rip) what Ms. Pross' attire looked like while she was struggling with Madame Defarge? I think not.
P.S. I've been interested in reading The Road, but settled instead for the watching the movie this Summer. Some parts were a little freaky, but overall the movie was interesting and went along with collection of post-apoclyptic world movies that have been so popular lately.
Word Count: 527
Dylan--it's always a bit of a shock for a reader today to first dip into the world of Dickens (or any other 19th century novel for that matter). The clash between our fast-paced lives with their perhaps consequent shorter attention spans, and the leisurely pace and greater descriptiveness of a Dickens novel may be an acquired taste, but I'm glad it began to work on you. And this is one of his briefer novels. And yes, the criss-crossing of seemingly unrelated plot threads is one of his signature devices as a writer.
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