Once I found access to The Annotated Christmas Carol (yesterday), I had to have a look at it. And I got no farther than the ACKNOWLEGMENTS page before I had to stop...because of this: "I am also indebted to the recently completed twelve-volume Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens (1965-2002)...." Because first off...wow, twelve volumes of letters. And second off...I wanted to have a look at that. So I started with The Internet Archive. They had one volume (the second). Not bad, but not enough. So I did a general Google, and found out that (1) most of The Usual Suspects offered just a volume or two, and (2) all were Pearls Of Great Price. And then there was AbeBooks:
Now is that a thing of beauty or what? But $6,000+ is just a tad bit rich for my blood. Besides, I don't think I really have it in me to read twelve volumes of Dickens' letters. Still...it's pretty impressive, ennit?
Well...as it turns out, I didn't stop after the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. In fact, I read to page L (50). It's pretty fascinating stuff. And there are quite a few illustrations, so it was an easy 50 pages.
Speaking of pages, there actually aren't 400 pages in this book as I'd noted previously. There are CXIV + 266 = 380. (+12 for Internet Archive, since they also count covers, endpapers, and those blank pages that some / many / most books contain, but they don't count here.) And since I knocked out 50 of them today, and still have six days (including Christmas morning), that means 330 ÷ 6 = 55 pages per day...which might actually be possible.
Well, you know I have to try now, right?
Also, here are a few of the things I found particularly interesting in today's reading:
"I am trying to enjoy my fame while it lasts...for I believe I am not so vain as to suppose that my books will be read by any but the men of my own times." (1840)
It's always fun to see Giants in the early days when they don't have any idea that they are going to be Giants.
Also this: "I have always had, and always shall have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light."
Mmmm. Good Bible. I mean Philosophy.
And I really loved this:
Yep, it's the original manuscript of page one of "A Christmas Carol."
Clearly Dickens was more Beethoven than Mozart.
Day 2 (DDRD 1,876) December 20, 2022
Read to page C. Really wanted to finish the Introduction, but I'm not sure that I have another 14 pages in me tonight. And I have the feeling that once I get to the story proper the pages will fly by. We'll see.
Day 3 (DDRD 1,877) December 21, 2022
Read to page 48. A few of the notes seem silly to me...like those which try to guess the real-world counterparts to buildings in Dickens' story...but most of them are really interesting. Like why English policemen are called bobbies. (It's because Sir Robert Peel organized the first modern metropolitan police form, so they were named after him.)
Making nice progress in this book, but I don't know if it'll be possible to finish by Christmas morning. It would take 266* - 48 = 218 ÷ 4 = 54.5 pages per day. Hmmm. Maybe. We'll see.
* Actual number of text pages in the book.
Day 4 (DDRD 1,878) December 22, 2022
Read to page 108. Which leaves 158 / 52.67 pages per day. Getting known.
And speaking of Henry James, I think I'm officially through with him after reading this:
What a motherfucker!
P.S. Read a little more...to page 118. And with my new adjusted figure for the End Of Text (excluding the bibliography), that now means 256 - 118 = 138 ÷ 3 = 44.5 pages per day. Which is getting downright do-able. And in other news, check out this thing of beauty:
That's right, the good old LFPL has come through at the clubhouse turn, and I now have an actual book book to read. Not to be ungrateful to the fine folks at The Internet Archive, because they were THERE when I needed them...and they got me through well over half of the text...but it's been hard to navigate between the text and the annotations, and having a copy of the book in my hands is going to save me a lot of time that was being lost there. So yes...I think that I'm going to make it by Christmas morning! I'm pretty excited at the prospect, actually. I might even read a few more pages tonight to celebrate.
Day 5 (DDRD 1,879) December 23, 2022
Read to page 176. Leaving 80 text pages. Just sayin', sir. And I'm probably going to read a bit more later, too. Meanwhile, A book was mentioned which I thought sounded interesting: London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew. It's available (Internet Archive, LFPL), but it's four volumes long, and I don't think my life is long enough for that. Alan Moore has credited this book as a source for From Hell, though, which kind of raises the ante for me.
While Wikipedia-ing on that, I found another book which looked extremely interesting...Street Life in London by Adolphe Smith with photography by John Thomson. This is also available via the Internet Archive, and might be a tad bit more easily digested, so I'll look into that. News as it happens.
Here's a bit of a line from today's reading which I found amusing:
"...shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are at it." It makes reference to the fact that the reformed Scrooge is so filled with joy that he finds shaving a challenge.
And also a bit of disappointing news for my OCD heart: there is even more Dickens out there which I would bet is not included in The Complete Dickens. To wit, he wrote a Prologue and a song ("The Song of the Wreck") for Wilkie Collins' play, The Lighthouse. And then I read a bit more and found that this wasn't the only play he'd been involved in. So...I conclude that it is probably impossible for me to track down everything that Dickens had a hand in writing, and will just have to be satisfied with completing The Complete Dickens...even though I know that it is Incomplete.
Addendum: Read a bit more...to page 200. Will definitely finish on Christmas morning.
🎉Woo-hoo. 🎉
BTW, it's amazing what a rock star Dickens was when he came back to America for a reading tour. People camping out overnight to get tickets, sold out shows, scalpers getting five or more times the face price of tickets, shows added.... The whole shebang.
Day 6 (DDRD 1,880) 🎄🌃December 24, 2022🌃🎄
Read to page 232. Al...most...there.
For the most part, I have enjoyed this book mightily and recommend it almost whole-heartedly. I have a penchant for annotated books anyway, and find this one particularly interesting. There are two things he which annoy me, though: (1) the very tiny, stylized, and faint page numbers, and (2) the textual errors. I haven't kept track of the later, but I'd guess there were about a dozen along the way. And they were very stupid errors...like referring to "The Cricket on the Health" or this bizarre misspelling:
Come on, W. W. Norton and Company...get on the fuckin' stick. This is Charles Dickens walking here.
Later...
I spent most of the day watching football, but after The Cowboys narrowly beat The Eagles, I dialed around and found...
Yep. FX is running two different versions of A Christmas Carol back to back from now until 3:30 am Monday. And who knows when this started. And on top of that, without even trying I ran across a Flinstones version of A Christmas Carol and a Bill Murray version (Scrooged). Pretty amazing for a story that was written 179 years ago.
Later Yet: I did a search and found that there were 27 other versions of A Christmas Carol available to me right now. Yep. 27. And that's just the ones available to me RIGHT NOW. Yowza.
Day 7 DDRD 1,881🎄🎅🤶👼December 25, 2022👼🤶🎅🎄
Read to page 266...The End.
The last text section of this book was a copy of Dickens' Reading Version of the story. It was interesting to see how he abridged his own tale...but as this was the third time in a row that I'd read it, it was a little bit tedious. But that's on me. If I'd known that I was going to go for this annotated version, I wouldn't have made "A Christmas Carol" the last thing I read in Christmas Books.
There were a couple of interesting things in the Bibliography, by the way. For one thing, there were a shitload of different editions of"A Christmas Carol," which was impressive. For another, one of those editions was illustrated by Ronald Searle--who I thought did the art for Pink Floyd's The Wall until I dug into it and found that it was actually by Ronald Seale Wanna Be Gerald Scarfe--which (1) looks very interesting and (2) goes for $50 to $100 on the used books market.
So that's it for my Dickens Christmas Project. 1,833 pages in 49 days, for an impressive average of 37.4 pages per day. Woot!
Merry Christmas to all, and God bless us every one.
And now...at long last...back to the novels with Dombey and Son Volume I. Woot! Woot!
DDR Day 1 to 1,000: 13,449 pages read, 13.45 Average Pages Per Day
+
DDR Day 1001 to Day 2000:
(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
(3) Life and Fate 26 days, 880 pages
(4) The Second World War 34 + 32 + 40 + 43 + 31 + 32 days = 212 days, 4,379 pages
(5) Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming 10 days, 572 pages
(6) The Great Bridge 25 days, 636 pages
(7) The Path Between the Seas 29 days, 698 pages
(8) Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 23 days, 523 pages
(9) Jerusalem 61 days, 1,266 pages
(10) Voice of the Fire 9 days, 320 pages
(11) The Fountainhead 15 days, 720 pages
(15) Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence 13 days, 304 pages(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
(3) Life and Fate 26 days, 880 pages
(4) The Second World War 34 + 32 + 40 + 43 + 31 + 32 days = 212 days, 4,379 pages
(5) Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming 10 days, 572 pages
(6) The Great Bridge 25 days, 636 pages
(7) The Path Between the Seas 29 days, 698 pages
(8) Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 23 days, 523 pages
(9) Jerusalem 61 days, 1,266 pages
(10) Voice of the Fire 9 days, 320 pages
(11) The Fountainhead 15 days, 720 pages
(12) The Pacific Trilogy: Pacific Crucible 23 days, 640 pages
(13) The Pacific Trilogy: The Conquering Tide 28 days, 656 pages
(14) The Pacific Trilogy: Twilight of the Gods 31 days, 944 pages
(13) The Pacific Trilogy: The Conquering Tide 28 days, 656 pages
(14) The Pacific Trilogy: Twilight of the Gods 31 days, 944 pages
(16) Toward Jazz 18 days, 224 pages
(17) The Worlds of Jazz 13 days, 279 pages
(18) To Be or Not...to Bop 14 days, 571 pages
(19) Kind of Blue 4 days, 224 pages
(20) Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and his Masterpiece: 5 days, 256 pages
(21) Miles: The Autobiography 16 days, 445 pages
(21) A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album: 8 days, 287 pages
(22) Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest 8 days, 304 pages
(23) Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings 11 days 325 pages
(24) The Pickwick Papers 28 days, 983 pages
(25) Oliver Twist 16 days, 542 pages
(26) Nicholas Nickleby 27 days, 1,045 pages
(27) The Old Curiosity Shop 22 days, 753 pages
(28) Barnaby Rudge 24 days, 866 pages
(25) Oliver Twist 16 days, 542 pages
(26) Nicholas Nickleby 27 days, 1,045 pages
(27) The Old Curiosity Shop 22 days, 753 pages
(28) Barnaby Rudge 24 days, 866 pages
2nd 1K Total: 21,353 (to BR) Average Pages Per Day: 27.38
Grand Total: 34,802. Average Pages Per Day: 19.55
(30) Martin Chuzzlewit 32 days, 1,045 pages
(31) American Notes 10 days, 324 pages
(32) Pictures From Italy 7 days, 211 pages
(33) Christmas Stories Volume I 10 days, 456 pages
(34) Christmas Stories Volume II 15 days, 472 pages
2nd 1K Total: 24,006 pages (to CSII) = 27.98 Average Pages Per Day
Grand Total: 37,455 pages, 20.16 Average Pages Per Day
(35) Christmas Books 17 days, 525 pages
(36) The Annotated Christmas Carol 7 days, 380 pages
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