All About Books discussion

John wrote: "Happy to be converted to them all!"

John you have to re read AToTC seriously it is brilliantly realised.

Tracey - I will, I will!

I cannot wait to re read it. The book I read was 2nd hand and an omnibus with Great expectations in it also. For Christmas I got a beautiful cloth bound copy of AtoTC and I know it will be even more of a pleasure to read this one.

Tracey - when reducing my books recently, I gave AToTC away; also Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, thinking I'd not read them again. So, it'll be Kindle for me for them! Oh, well.

I love my hardback books John I could never read on a screen.

Tracey - I first got a Kindle to keep the weight down for overseas holiday reading. In reading Pickwick, I read 80% in a lovely hardback edition and the rest on small tablet/smartphone when walking the dogs in damp weather. If I could get a house with room for loads more books, and get a servant to walk the dogs, I'd dispense with Kindle, etc, but until then .....

Just a week to go now before March - the month I read Oliver Twist. It will be about the fifth time of reading it for me, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it. It will be even more fun if others are reading it alongside me :)

Jean wrote: "Just a week to go now before March - the month I read Oliver Twist. It will be about the fifth time of reading it for me, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it. It will be even more fun if othe..."

I am ready to start as soon as I finish An American Tragedy...

Great, Leslie :) Should make a nice break from your course work?

Jean I can't wait to start OT alongside you but it is my first time reading it. :)

What a treat we both have in store Tracey! :)

It will be Saturday for me and we're going to see The Invisible Woman then too. :)

A Dickens-themed day - how wonderful! Tomorrow for me with the Claire Tomalin :)

I'm currently on Cold Comfort Farm - a real book!; Through The Wall by Pat Wentworth on Audible at home with my wife; The Hanged Man of St-Pholien, an early Maigret on Audible while dog-walking. But I shall join you for Oliver Twist on Kindle, not expecting to enjoy it much - but I hope to be surprised!

Great to have you along John. You have thrown down a gauntlet there I see :D

John wrote: "I'm currently on Cold Comfort Farm - a real book!; Through The Wall by Pat Wentworth on Audible at home with my wife; The Hanged Man of St-Pholien, an early Maigret on Audible while dog-walking. B..."

It's on my TBR list; interesting your comment!

I see optimism abounds again John! lol

Tracey - I've just got Oliver Twist open on my Nexus, and A Tale of Two Cities on my Kindle, so I can really put myself through my low expectations in the next few weeks! It's being so cheerful as keeps me going!

John, curmudgeonly is definitely required here. But when you end up loving theses masterpieces I will say ner ner ne ner ner! :-D

Jean wrote: "Just a week to go now before March - the month I read Oliver Twist. It will be about the fifth time of reading it for me, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it. It will be even more fun if othe..."

Just say when!

Have you read OT before Charbel ?

Tracey wrote: "Have you read OT before Charbel ?"

Only once a while ago. It's definitely time for a reread.

I'm hoping to start a week today - or sometime next week anyway Charbel. It'll be great to have you along too :)

OLIVER TWIST

Starting Oliver Twist today! I love to vary what I read, but must confess it feels as though I am "coming home" to Dickens after my last three reads of Bertrand Russell , Simon Brett and Ray Bradbury .

How's everybody getting on? I'm not planning to break it down or even say what speed I'll go for this one so far. I just want to enjoy it. But I will bear any plot surprises in mind and use spoiler tabs here if it becomes necessary :)

Looking at my current book, I find I read it in May 1992, April 1997, October 2002 and November 2011. Further back would need recourse to my diaries! I'm sure there'll still be a few surprises this time round though. Feeling excited! :)

(edited to include title)

Yiphee Jean I am racing through thus one.
Just finished The invisible woman and A Midsummer night's dream so back to my normal 2 at once now. :)

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts and reviews. I loved Oliver Twist when I read it about 18 months ago. It's such a well loved storyline but reading the original text from Dickens was brilliant.

I've been trying to find out if there's any actual workhouse which inspired the one in Oliver Twist, and I found a book by Ruth Richardson, Dickens and the Workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London Poor . She wrote it after discovering that as a boy Dickens had lived within a mile of the "Cleveland Street Workhouse", which was very nearly demolished last year!

Part of the workhouse building continues to be maintained by the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and part of the site is also now occupied by Kier, the construction company responsible for demolishing the adjacent building. Some damage or loss of historical information may already have occurred while this was being sorted out, but it looks as if preservation of the original building is now settled.

Dickens lived in Cleveland Street from when he was nearly 3 to nearly 5 years old. But then Dickens's father was arrested for debt and the family was forced to live inside the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison in Southwark.

The family returned to the same house in Norfolk/Cleveland Street several years later, when Dickens was nearly seventeen, and stayed until he was almost twenty. During that time, he was out at work as a young legal clerk, and training himself to become a shorthand court reporter.

Although it may have provided the idea, the Cleveland Street Workhouse was not the only model for the one in "Oliver Twist" though. Apparently he also based it on the Kettering Workhouse, in Northamptonshire, which he said had been his inspiration. The Kettering Workhouse's bad reputation for ill-treatment was apparently widely known.

Pictures of both the Cleveland Street workhouse, Dickens's childhood home, and some interesting articles (including a feature about a Dickens enthusiast from Toronto stepping in to finance a blue plaque for the house) can be read by clicking on this link

Jean wrote: "Starting Oliver Twist today! I love to vary what I read, but must confess it feels as though I am "coming home" to Dickens after my last three reads of [author:Bertrand Russell|17854..."

I started this morning as well -- just the first few chapters but already loving it all over again!

Oh good, Leslie! I temporarily removed my 5* rating while I'm reading it... but somehow I think it might stay the same :)

I'll be starting it soon. Maybe on Friday.

Great Charbel :)

I had forgotten the bitter acrimonious tone of the opening chapters. Oliver Twist was originally published in monthly parts between Feb 1837 - Apr 1839, and this follows hot on the heels of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. It seemed a good idea to read a bit about this.

Previously it had been the duty of the parishes to care for the poor through alms and taxes. They could either go to the parish workhouse or apply for "outdoor relief", which enabled them to live at home and work at outside jobs. But the new Poor Law of 1834 grouped parishes together into unions. Each union had a workhouse, and the only help available to poor people from then on was to become inmates in the workhouse.

As Dickens tells us with bitter sarcasm in chapter 2, the workhouse was little more than a prison for the poor. Civil liberties were denied, families were separated, and human dignity was destroyed. The inadequate diet instituted in the workhouse prompted his ironic comment that,

"all poor people should have the alternative... of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it."

The biting sarcasm is what I love about it (well, one of the things)! But I don't know that I would call it acrimonious...

Thanks for all the wonderful background info Jean!

Vituperative?

Leslie and John - they're both great words, aren't they? I googled them:

acrimonious
(typically of speech or discussion) angry and bitter.
synonyms: bitter, rancorous, caustic, acerbic, scathing, sarcastic, acid, harsh, sharp, razor-edged, cutting, astringent, trenchant, mordant, virulent;

vituperative
bitter and abusive.
"a vituperative outburst"

So either would be correct, I feel, though I do like "vituperative"!! Possibly that is a better choice, when it is a case of one person spitting venom rather than a discussion with lots of people doing the same. I'll try to make sure I use the most appropriate term when I come to write my review! LOL

The point I wanted to record was that I had forgotten this er... bile... and now realise that it was the violent reaction of what would later be termed an "angry young man" against what he saw as the inhuman tightening of the "Poor Laws" only 3 years earlier.

It must all have seemed very close to home, for him, and I have no doubt that he lived in fear of seeing his own family split up and degraded in this way. So poignant, yet he managed to express all this is the guise of "entertainment for the masses" - and inject some humour too! What a man! :)

Jean wrote: "... realise that it was the violent reaction of what would later be termed an "angry young man" against what he saw as the inhuman tightening of the "Poor Laws" only 3 years earlier.

It must all have seemed very close to home, for him, and I have no doubt that he lived in fear of seeing his own family split up and degraded in this way. So poignant, yet he managed to express all this is the guise of "entertainment for the masses" - and inject some humour too! What a man! :) "

This aspect of his writing is one of the things that I am drawn towards so I guess that it isn't surprising that this is one of my favorites :)

Now that I see the definitions and synonyms, acrimonious probably was the correct term. I had thought acrimonious implied abusive and/or argumentative (which it doesn't I now see)... I love the list of synonyms & am going to try to use some of these words more often :)

I, likewise, was really surprised by that opening outburst. It shows the worth of re-reading the best books/authors periodically. Until Goodreads I really have not been doing that that enough.

It seems merely nuance, doesn't it, although when John said "vituperative" it did seem perfect - it's a more personal outburst from an individual. After all, you can have an "acrimonious" discussion (we've all been there...) but to be "vituperative, you are on your own!

I too had forgotten the sheer passion in this book, Leslie.

John - I've always reread to a certain extent - mainly because I always used to read so fast. But like you, I'm finding Goodreads (and this group) has focused my rereads even more :)

John wrote: "I, likewise, was really surprised by that opening outburst. It shows the worth of re-reading the best books/authors periodically. Until Goodreads I really have not been doing that that enough."

I have always been a rereader, but until I discovered audiobooks, my rereading tended to be mysteries, Georgette Heyer and children's books. They were comfort books...

Now I have a stockpile of audiobooks of classics which I got free when Amazon & Audible were promoting their WhisperSYNC technology and am discovering a new way to revisit these. It has been a great way for me to do this, as I would otherwise be tempted to say that I don't have the time to reread a book that I remember pretty well (like Oliver Twist); the downside of GoodReads is that I now realize how many wonderful books I haven't read yet!

I am racing through this as I get so caught up in the story that I don't want to stop listening!! I just finished Chapter 18 and forced myself to stop so I can view my class lecture videos.

Wow, you are yes, Leslie! Pleased you're enjoying it so much though :)

Does your player have a "speed-up" facility? My DAISY player does (though not my CD player) and I find it useful if the reader has a somnolent sort of voice, but that doesn't really happen very often. And I don't think I've ever slowed anyone down! They just sound drunk then!

Yes, my iPod Touch will do 2x but I am not using it for this. Very occasionally, I will listen to Audible audiobooks on my Kindle Fire, which has more speed settings - I will usually use 1.5x unless I am doing an immersion read (read and listen at the same time) - then I might crank it up to 3x! (I read a lot faster than the narration!!)

My iPad, Nexus7, and Galaxy Ace all have speed variations, and I generally use 1, 1.25, or 1.5, usually to make the speed equal to how I would read - some readers can be languid, to say the least. Occasionally x2 when I want to finish a poor book!

Interesting! I may explore these ideas.

I've been delving into the differences between the publications. When reading The Pickwick Papers I mentioned that Oliver Twist had already started to be serialised way before Pickwick finished.

It was called "Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress", and was first published serially in the weekly periodical "Bentley's Miscellany" (where Dickens was editor at the time) from February 1837 to April 1839.

Interestingly though, it was not originally intended as a full fledged serialised novel but as part of something called Dickens's "Mudfog Papers". These were a series of sketches (like "Pickwick") based on a fictional town called "Mudfog" and the learned society satirically called "The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything." We now know that "Mudfog" was heavily based on Chatham, in Kent.

In the first installment of Oliver Twist in Bentley's, Dickens specifically sets the action in Mudfog, starting the story with these words,

"Among other public buildings in the town of Mudfog..."

After serialisation though, the 3-volume book form of Oliver Twist was published in early 1839, and in 1846, Dickens issued a substantially revised version first as ten monthly parts and then as a single volume.

These later editions say,

"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse;"

I must admit I quite like the idea of "Mudfog", but I expect Dickens removed the specific name, to help his case. He wanted to heighten his damning depictions of workhouses in general, not just in one location.

I am noticing that Fagin is often being referred to as "the Jew", much more frequently than I remembered.

Yes, I think one of the main criticisms of Oliver Twist is the antisemitism shown in the author's portrayal of Fagin as a "dirty Jew". Sadly, it is in keeping with the time. Shakespeare had famously done this much earlier with Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in 1596, setting the play in 16th Century Venice, and it's disheartening to realise that even over 200 years later, that particular prejudice was still rife and actually ingrained into English society. With all great authors we hope that they will somehow manage to step outside the mores of their time, but maybe we expect too much.

Up to a point, Dickens did manage to do that - but only later. Apparently he expressed surprise, when the Jewish community complained about the stereotypical depiction of Fagin at the time Oliver Twist was written (1837). Dickens had befriended James Davis, a Jewish man, and when he eventually came to sell his London residence, he sold the lease of Tavistock House to the Davis family, as an attempt to make restitution. "Letters of Charles Dickens 1833-1870" include this sentence in the narrative to 1860. "This winter was the last spent at Tavistock House...He made arrangements for the sale of Tavistock House to Mr Davis, a Jewish gentleman, and he gave up possession of it in September."

There is other additional evidence of a rethink, and we have to remember that Dickens was a very young man - still only 25 - when he wrote "Oliver Twist". When editing Oliver Twist for the "Charles Dickens edition" of his works, he eliminated most references to Fagin as "the Jew." Perhaps you are reading an earlier edition, Leslie?

And in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend , (1864) Dickens created Riah, a positive Jewish character.

Jean wrote: "Yes, I think one of the main criticisms of Oliver Twist is the antisemitism shown in the author's portrayal of Fagin as a "dirty Jew". Sadly, it is in keeping with the time. Shakespea..."

That's really interesting, Jean. I read this book about a year ago, so can remember it quite well, and I also remember lots of references to Fagin as "the Jew" - but I didn't know Dickens had edited his work at a later stage. I think you're right, Jean, we can't expect authors of that time to think the same way as we do - the world was a very different place then.

Thanks for joining in Shirley :)

I don't know if anyone noticed, but I edited the post about antisemitism as I'd been finding conflicting information about who Dickens sold his house to! Wikipedia and a couple of biographies both mentioned another couple, and "history.org" said "this question is now closed" without answering the question at all! Useless :(

So I went back to the horse's mouth, and found that bit in Dickens's letters. I also updated my post to show that the question had been resolved. I don't think I could stand to be one of those people who spend their life correcting Wikipedia though. I'd rather read more books :)

Jean wrote: "...additional evidence of a rethink, and we have to remember that Dickens was a very young man - still only 25 - when he wrote "Oliver Twist". When editing Oliver Twist for the "Charles Dickens edition" of his works, he eliminated most references to Fagin as "the Jew." Perhaps you are reading an earlier edition, Leslie?..."

I don't know which edition is being used in the audiobook, but perhaps my paperback edition is one of the later ones which would explain why I don't recall this feature.

I do agree with you both that we should be careful not to judge authors and works on today's standards, and I don't actually think that Dickens is really anti-Semitic. But I was surprised by how frequently it was mentioned.

Yes, sadly it is in my Large Print version too, so I was keen to nail this topic for myself :)

He's also referred to quite frequently from Oliver's point of view as "the merry old gentleman" (and "the pleasant old gentleman" - although that may arguably be ironic) and I always feel that he is actually very kind to the destitute boys, when few others would be.

In fact I suppose the whole character of Fagin is ironic in a way. Victorian society placed so much value and emphasis on industry, capitalism and individualism. And who embodies this most successfully? Fagin - who operates in the illicit businesses of theft and prostitution! His "philosphy" is that the group’s interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for himself, saying,
"a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company."

More thoughts about Fagin now. He could be viewed as a sort of bogeyman, as he (view spoiler)[makes children into thieves (hide spoiler)]. Dickens also invests Fagin with symbols that are normally reserved for the Devil.

When we first meet Fagin, he is roasting some sausages on an open fire, "with a toasting fork in his hand" . This must be important to Dickens as it is mentioned two more times! Then in the next chapter we find Fagin equipped with a fire-shovel. Also the term the merry old gentleman could be a euphemistic term for the Devil.

Fagin is certainly a complicated character who can be viewed on many levels.

How's everybody getting on? I'm up to chapter 16 now.