sovay: (I Claudius)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote 2010-06-26 06:07 am (UTC)

Congrats on the anthology! The concept sounds intriguing.

Thank you! I can tell you that there will be golems, too.

I haven't actually read the book, but I very much like the quote. (Should I? I had to read Hard Times for a class in college and hated it, which rather put me off Dickens.)

Hm. A Tale of Two Cities is most people's introduction to Dickens—I think it was mine—and I do recommend it on general principle, but you should be aware that it's not a representative novel. It's incredibly stripped-down, fast-paced, vividly melodramatic (although in its favor, in ways that I find formally thoughtful as opposed to stupidly rote), and it contains exactly one real character (one and a half if you want to be generous) against a cast of interlocking motifs. That said, the one real character is someone you might take a great interest in, and I suspect you would enjoy the language and the themes and the hurtling historical pageantry. Give it a try; if you don't like it, that indicates nothing about you and Dickens. I've never been under the impression that Hard Times was his masterwork, either.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting