Well ho fucking ho, looks like I might make it through this 1,400+ page Dickens 🎄Christmas🎄 Walkabout after all. And before Christmas even hits, so how do you like that blue eyed boy, mister?
I wouldn't have put any money on it as I struggled through Christmas Stories Volume I, which is only the second of THE COMPLETE DICKENS books that I would not recommend reading. Well, worse than that, actually: I would strongly recommend that you not read it. Unless you want to dislike Dickens, in which case that should be your first choice, followed venisoon after by Martin Chuzzlewit. I consider them to be wastes of time.
But surprise, surprise, surprise, Christmas Stories Volume II was much better. It rarely rose to the level of good, but it was not a chore to read, either, so while I would not go out of my way to recommend it, I wouldn't recommend not reading it, either.
Which brings us to the current (third and last) volume of the 🎄Dickens🎄Christmas🎄Project, Christmas Books. This one includes some heavy hitters in its TOC:
"A Christmas Carol"'
"The Chimes"
"The Cricket on the Hearth"
"The Battle of Life"
"The Haunted Man"
Day 1 (DDRD 1,859) December 3, 2022
Read the Introduction (VII to XIV) by Eleanor Farjeon. Thought it was not so great and completely unnecessary, but when I looked up Farjeon to see who she was found that she was a pretty prolific author, and that one of her books, The Little Bookroom, not only looked interesting, but was also published by New York Review Books, one of my favorite publishers. So I might have to look into that. Also read Preface, TOC...and then instead of starting in on "A Christmas Carol," I decided to skip to the second story, "The Chimes," and read pages 99 to 120. Because I thought it'd be best to hold "A Christmas Carol" for last, since I'm pretty sure that it is going to be good (since I've seen various movie versions and since it is an acknowledged and revered classic), but I don't have any such knowledge of the other "books" in this volume. Maybe a bit of trepidation also holds over from the two volumes of Christmas Stories, since none of them would rank amongst the best of Dickens...and many would rank amongst his worst.
At any rate...I felt like I was reading real Dickens as I started "The Chimes," and I'm hoping that that continues to hold true as I progress through the story. I'll be with it for a few days, as it is a long one...goes to page 200.
Day 2 (DDRD 1,860) December 4, 2022
Read to page 150, and the story continues to seem like real Dickens to me. Not much has happened, but the characters are vivid, there's some bitting social satire about the relationship between politicians and their constituents (pretty much the relationship between a farmer and his cow, but with less caring and less plentiful feeing...and more milking). Enjoying it. Also, seems like a very fitting Christmas story --as the others have NOT--in that it occurs at the season (I think...there are repeated references to the coming New Year, anyway), and in that at least at the moment the story is centered on kindness toward others and sacrificing one's own desires in order to help someone else...in this case a stranger who is in trouble. So...yep.
Day 3 (DDRD 1,861) December 5, 2022
Read to page 180. This story is pretty strange...ghosts and spirits and such stuff...but it continues to hold my interest.
Here's a bit--
"Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!”
--which seemed very much like one of my favorite Kafka quotes:
"One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the disposition of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery--since everything interlocked--and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless."
Day 4 (DDRD 1,862) December 6, 2022
Read to page 210, which finished off "The Chimes" and got me a few pages into "The Cricket on the Hearth."
As for the latter, I didn't get enough to have any sense of the story. It was mostly about a teapot boiling. As for the former, I found the last part a bit confusing, and I think that's probably because I didn't read it in one sitting, as I think it was designed to be read. That'd be a pretty long sitting, though, wouldn't it? 100 pages...probably a couple of hours' worth of reading. If you've got the time, though, that's the way to do it, I'd say.
Day 5 (DDRD 1,863) December 7, 2022
Read to page 240. One of the characters in this story is a blind girl who makes dolls. I probably need to read this story to Jacqueline (loves St. Lucy and Helen Keller, owns hundreds of dolls--literally). Still 65 pages to go in this story, so it's almost as long as "The Chimes."
Looks like I now only need to read 20.78 pages per day to finish Christmas Books on Christmas Day. If I continue to read 30 pages per day, I'll finish almost a week early. Hmmm. I don't like either of those solutions.
Day 6 (DDRD 1,864) December 8, 2022
Read to page 270. Sorry to admit that once again I got a little lost as to the story, so I cheated: looked it up online and saw where I'd gone astray. Well, actually saw that I hadn't gone astray, because the thing that I thought had happened but knew couldn't have happened actually did happen...it just didn't mean what it seemed to mean at the time. So there's that. Should be finishing this up tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here's a thing:
Dickens describes a character as being "as perfectly at home...as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid." (256)
This guy. He was the Douglas Adams of his time. And not just because of the salmon.
Day 7 (DDRD 1,865) December 9, 2022
Read to page 305, which was the end of "The Cricket on the Hearth." Which was a pretty good story. In fact, a very good story...though the transformation of the post-Scrooge Scrooge-ish Tackleton was a bit too out of the blue for me. To some extent this seemed to be a retro of "A Christmas Carol," but there were some interesting and revifying story elements here as well. The romance stories, for example, which were both good. Speaking of good, I particularly enjoyed the illustrations in this text, especially the final one of the dance. John Leech did this one (there were four other illustrators involved: Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Edwin Landseer, and Clarkson Stanfield), and he added a non-textual element to this illustration which I found delightful:
16 reading days until Christmas!
Day 8 (DDRD 1,866) December 10, 2022
Read to page 335.
Day 9 (DDRD 1,867) December 11, 2022
Read to page 365. The current story (or Book), "The Battle of Life," isn't doing much for me. Interesting beginning, with the big battle and then time overtaking the destruction, but the story itself, a twisted up Romance, isn't catching my interest much. In fact, I'd intended to read to page 370 this morning, just to even things out, but I just ran out of energy for it. Which means I'll have two more days to live with this story instead of one, but oh well.
Day 10 (DDRD 1,868) December 12, 2022
Read to page 395.
Day 11 (DDRD 1,869) 👁December 13, 2022 👁
It's St. Lucy's Day! Of course we made St. Lucy Cat Buns.
Read to page 425, which finished off "The Battle of Life" (and battle it was; by the end of it I wasn't really sure what this story was even about, to be honest). And got me a few pages into "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain." Not far enough to be able to tell anything worth noting about it, but here's a nice little surprise: some of the illustrations for this story were done by none other than John Tenniel...the great and original illustrator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Please note that there is no such book as Alice in Wonderland.)
So there's that.
And twelve shopping days until 🎅🤶Christmas🤶🎅.
Day 12 (DDRD 1,870) December 14, 2022
Read to page 455. There was an interesting bit wherein a character encountered a "dead" version of himself, and said "dead" version offered to take away all of the live version's sorrows. The live version acceded to this, and there seem to be some rather dire consequences, though I'm not sure about that just yet. My guess is that the live character has lost his compassion for others...which would make sense.
Day 13 (DDRD 1,871) December 15, 2022
Read to page 485. So I might be able to finish this story off tomorrow if I put in a little extra time (there are about 40 pages to go). This story is sometimes interesting, but I have a hard time keeping hold of the Big Picture. I know what the characters are doing, but don't know why they're doing it.
Day 14 (DDRD 1,872) December 16, 2022
Read to page 515...which only left 10 pages to this story; I thought about finishing it off, but I just didn't have the strength. There are some interesting bits in this one, but its just so tedious that I can't get pulled into it. So I'll finish it off tomorrow.
Day 15 (DDRD 1,873) December 17, 2022
Read to page 525, then went back for "A Christmas Carol" and read to page 20. And you know, although I was loathe to start on "ACC" today, wanting to keep it separate, it was instructive to see it juxtaposed against "The Haunted Man." The latter was not a very good story. But from the first few words, it was obvious that "ACC" deserved its reputation. It crackled with life. It pulled you into itself. In fact, I really didn't want to stop reading...but decided to do so so as not to finish it off TOO quickly.
Day 16 (DDRD 1,874) December 18, 2022
Read to page 50. It's amazing how gripping this story is... especially in contrast with the other Christmas Stories & Books, none of which can hold a candle to "A Christmas Carol." And at least at this point (halfway through), it doesn't seem overly sentimental at all. In fact, it gets pretty rough and real at times. I see why Dickens is so closely associated with this piece now, for sure.
Day 17 (DDRD 1,875) December 19, 2022
Read to page 80, which leaves a mere 18 pages in this volume...and which means that I shall complete my Dickens Christmas Project after all. For the most part its been disappointing, as many of the Christmas Stories were frustratingly bad. But "A Christmas Carol" is so good that it almost makes up for it. I'll be sorry to finish this one off tomorrow.
BREAKING NEWS!!! I've been obsessing about The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose by Michael Patrick Hearn for some time, and thought that maybe I could read it after I finished "A Christmas Carol," possibly even before Christmas Day. And I found a copy at the library...but it was out, and even now, A mere five shopping days before The Day, there's still one person ahead if me. I even looked around to see if I could buy a copy--and I could, but not in time for me to read on my schedule. So I'd given up on it, decided I'd just move on to my next Dickens novel (Dombey and Son), when I had a thought: "Is there any chance that the Internet Archive would have this book?" I didn't think so, but I had a look anyway, and...
Yep, FOUR different editions of the book. I chose the lower right one because it had the latest publication date (2004) and the largest page count (400). And so now I'm ready to go! I think I'm going to finish off "A Christmas Carol" later today and start in on Annotated tomorrow. There's not much hope that I can choke down 400 pages in five days, but knowing myself, I will probably try.
News as it happens.
As It Happens: finished "A Christmas Carol." And can't recommend it enough. It is definitely one of the greatest pieces of Western literature ever.
And now I'm going to read it again...with annotations.
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
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