Reading post: Charles Dickens in December

December is not over, but the end of the year gets so complicated that I think now would be a good time for a reading post. In December I decided to read books by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). He seemed to fit well with the Christmas season. But when I looked at my master list, I was shocked to realize that the only Dickens on it is Bleak House, which I read with my book group back in 2016. Of course I've read A Christmas Carol, but I've always thought of it as a short story, so it didn't make my list. I've seen dramatizations of some of his works, but haven't read them. I think I always thought I didn't like Dickens, but I don't know what I was basing that conclusion on. So this month I attempted to remedy my lack of Dickens experience.

Here's a fairly complete list of his longer works. I've highlighted in blue what I'd read before this month, and in red what I read this month.

• (1830s) Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers,  Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, 
• (1840s) The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, Dombey and Son, 
• (1850s) David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities,  
• (1860s) Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, No Thoroughfare, 
• (1870s) The Mystery of Edwin Drood (posthumous)
  

Yes, I read Dickens all month, but didn't get very far.

• The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club aka The Pickwick Papers (1837). I started with this book because nobody ever seems to read it, and yet I knew it's considered funny, plus I knew it had Christmas bits in it. I really enjoyed it, every one of its 57 chapters, which took up (in my edition) 801 pages! It was as long as a very long presidential biography. And since it was Christmas, and I had a lot to do, I mostly read this at bedtime, when I was sleepy, and the book would put me right to sleep. I didn't finish it until December 23rd. But I did really enjoy it and am very happy I read it. It's funny, it's silly, and the characters are delightful, especially Mr. Pickwick's servant Sam. There's also a "goblin story" that must be Dickens' first attempt at what eventually became A Christmas Carol. The edition I read had multiple introductions, including one by G. K. Chesterton in an Appendix, and Chesterton makes the point that in The Pickwick Papers, Dickens' tendency to be maudlin is happily restrained (because he was trying to make the book lighthearted and funny).
  

  This is the one book in which Dickens was, as it were, forced to trample down his tender feelings; and for that very reason it is the one book where all the tenderness there is is quite unquestionably true. (p. 812)
  

  
  The Chimes (1844). Partway through Pickwick I realized that I wasn't going to get much else read this month, so I took David Copperfield back to the library. I did hope to read a little more than Pickwick, though, so I settled for a couple of novellas. After the success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote four more "Christmas stories," none of them nearly as good and most of them not actually about Christmas. The Chimes is about a poor man called Trotty who likes to listen to the bells of the nearby church. On New Year's Eve, when things in his life are looking pretty desperate and he has lost faith in their ability to improve, he climbs to the bell tower, where the goblins of the bells show him what will happen to his family if no one has hope. He regains his hope in humanity and everything magically fixes itself. I was not impressed by this story at all, and in fact kept getting confused by it. Not recommended.
  
  
• The Cricket on the Hearth (1845). In this story, which has nothing to do with Christmas (though it does take place in the winter), a young woman married to a much older man is suspected of cheating on him. Of course it isn't true, and all is well in the end, including another young couple whose love is almost, but not quite, thwarted. And the cricket chirps along. This story was OK, but it was so obvious what was going to happen that I got quite bored with it. Not recommended either.
  

So, what's the consensus? The Pickwick Papers was so much fun that I do want to read more Dickens eventually. I'd like to read David Copperfield and Oliver Twist and Great Expectations and maybe some of the others. Eventually. When I need a break from all my other reading. December actually seems like a great time to read Dickens -- I'll try to remember that.

I read very little else this month, though I did manage to read one modern Christmas book (a silly romantic mystery). Also, Teen A had to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien for English, so I read it to him, and we finished it earlier this month. What an incredible book. I've been told for years that I should read it, but I thought it would be too depressing. It's really not, it's just very good.

What comes next? 

So 2024 is ending, and 2025 is looming, which means it's time for a new challenge of some sort. I see no signs that the Classics Challenge is restarting (hope the woman who runs it is OK) and I don't really want to go hunting for another internet challenge. Instead I am going to do what I've been meaning to do for a while. 

Each issue of The New Yorker contains a section called "Briefly Noted," where they describe (briefly) four new books. For at least 15 years, maybe more, I've been clipping the reviews that sound interesting to me and sticking them in a big envelope. I didn't do it with every issue, but even so I had many, many little reviews saved. I decided recently to go through them, throw out the ones I was sure I didn't want to read (and the ones I've already read), and divide the rest into fiction and nonfiction. I ended up with something like 500 reviews (which really isn't many, seeing as how the New Yorker publishes nearly 200 of them per year).

So now I have two big envelopes, and my plan for 2025 is that each month I will reach into them and pull out a review of a novel and a review of a nonfiction book. If the books still sound interesting, I'll attempt to get them from the library or whatever, and read them. If the review I pick doesn't sound good, I'll toss it. No fair saying, hmm, maybe another month. It's do or die. I think this will be fun, and it means I'll have the rest of the month to read whatever else I want to read. And in 2026 I can do something more specific and historical, or whatever. But 2025 can be my year to catch up with books published in this century (24 of them, anyway). I'll also continue to read books off the NY Times' "Best of the 21st century so far" list.

Oh, and I'm planning to read biographies of three presidents: FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower. I'm planning to read more than one book about FDR, which is why I'm only going to try to do three presidents this year.

Next week I'll do my usual post about what I read all through the year. And on we go.