From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London

Judith Flanders

Start date: May 1, 2015

Finish date: May 31, 2015

Discussion: New Book Group Read

Discussion leader: Lauren

Why we're reading this: The May 2015 new book poll winner.
[close] The May 2015 new book poll winner.

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New Book Group Read

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last updated Sep 21, 2016 07:37AM

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What Members Thought

May 16, 2015 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library-borrow, cultural-studies-and-other, wanderlust

What I learned from reading this book is that Charles Dickens really was an extraordinary writer, in that he wrote what he knew and wrote it convincingly. He sort of has a bad rep for being a bore by modern readers' standards, and there's a fine enough argument there. But when you really take the time to pay attention to the detail he included in his books and stories about the people, the city, the food, the smells, the sounds... he nailed it.

This was a great book for a regular Joe Schmoe, an e What I learned from reading this book is that Charles Dickens really was an extraordinary writer, in that he wrote what he knew and wrote it convincingly. He sort of has a bad rep for being a bore by modern readers' standards, and there's a fine enough argument there. But when you really take the time to pay attention to the detail he included in his books and stories about the people, the city, the food, the smells, the sounds... he nailed it.

This was a great book for a regular Joe Schmoe, an everyday reader, to appreciate. There's nothing especially difficult or pretentious about reading this book, so if you're into Dickens and his contemporaries and want to take the knowledge you're gaining by reading his books to a whole new level, this is a great supplementary read.

Flanders talks about a variety of different topics involving the London Charles Dickens knew and (arguably) loved. My favorite, strangely, was about transportation. Maybe because I am a mass transit rider myself, and I've done my fair share of bitching because the Port Authority buses are down, or stink, or make scary noises, or the drivers sometimes appear to be driving under the influence; but that chapter especially spoke to me, and showed me that, shit, I have nothing to really complain about.

That was really the impression I carried throughout the book. They ate what now? They smelled what? These are things I've know because, again, I've read Dickens, but when you take it out of a fictional account and put it in light of Holy shit guys, this really was what it was like, it puts things into major perspective.

At times a bit meandering, overall I enjoyed the read. The color plates and the black and white images throughout were a fantastic addition, and that's what can make or break a nonfiction book for me a lot of the time. The back flap of the book says Flanders is "one of the foremost social historians of the Victorian era" which I think is one of the coolest labels one could be given and I think, based on this one book, a very apt one.

One word of warning: Flanders is from London and she occasionally writes as though all of her readers knows exactly where and what she's talking about. This would be great for a local London reader, but for me - a poor soul living in fucking Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - I don't need it rubbed in that London is waiting for me to visit. I don't need to see references like "This is where Whole Foods is now." That doesn't mean much to me. However, I suppose if someone wrote a book this informative about Pittsburgh, I'd be all over those local references, so whatever - I'm just being crabby about the fact that I don't live in London which is truly unfair. ...more

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