4/5 stars
This is my 3rd book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-3. Full list can be found here.
which Rex leads 10-3. Full list can be found here.
I love Christmas. If there are two things in this world that I can't understand how people don't love, it's Christmas and Star Wars. Even if you're not religious, which I'm definitely not, Christmas is such a ludicrously rad holiday season. It's just cheerful songs and balls-out consumerism and everyone's throwing parties and everyone's laughing like stooges and even the lingerie women wear is festive. IT'S ALL GREAT.
So, naturally, an asshole like Scrooge is an unfathomable dickhead in my opinion. But as his brightly spirited nephew points out, it's almost laughable, since he only damages himself. Now, as long as I have been upon this Earth, I have known this story, and I have known a wide variety of adaptions. My personal favorite is the Muppets' rendition because it has Michael Caine and Fozzy Bear, two of my favorite actors. So it's almost surreal to finally read the text with every line that I've heard a time and time again without reading the original source ("Come in and know me better, man!" - "God bless us, every one." - "Show me no more, spirit.") However, imagine my immense surprise when things are there in the original story that I don't readily recall in later versions (Scrooge's sister? The Ghost of Christmas Present has two malnourished children representing Ignorance and Want beneath his great cloak?).
Also, all me friends lied their mouths rotten about the words of Charles Dickens being as cold and dense as cobblestone, they did! Bliiiiiimey, did they eva! There's not an impossible word in there, there ain't. He's somehow the narrator, even though the book be mostly written in the third person, it is. I should say, Mr. Dickens is a laugh and a great giver of the cheer, but, here I am, all these years, expectin' it to be as rough as a hanging by me own neck to get through his passages of yore. Hells bells, he is a master of transformation of man, he is! I was as plum as pudding with what he did, I was. Maybe his otha books are the bricks I was foretold, but, not this one, no sir. This classic novella put me in right good spirits, it did! I might give it anotha go when Christmas rolls its jolly holly head 'round once more!
Seriously though, this book was rad.
Seriously though, this book was rad.
2 comments:
51/50 "Submerged in Suburbia".
HA! Sorry, couldn't resist.
PS, you may kind of end up like that unfathomable dickhead someday.
Just saying. Don't judge him too harshly. Let's go watch a play together this holiday season.
Ha. It wouldn't count, since I'm going to read that book before this competition is done. Also, I downloaded it to my phone and realized how crazy it's going to make me. Any way to score it as a PDF for my laptop?
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