Rainy Day Reads

A book that’s over 900 pages long can seem a bit daunting for most. But as usual with Dickens I don’t think the length is too much. The language is engaging and the story is interesting, so while the pages don’t fly by, they don’t drag on forever either. I think it really pays off in the end if you manage to forget about the page numbers.   Dickens can be a bit wordy and longwinded sometimes, but it doesn’t happen too often, I think. The wordiness usually comes out, when he is explaining some part of the world the characters inhabit, like the doings (or not-doings) of the Circumlocution Office and the social rules of the various places in the story. When the plot is developing I find the language interesting and descriptive, without being too much.  As for the plot of this book is it very intricate, as is usual for Dickens, I think. Seemingly unconnected characters come together in the end in unexpected, but not unbelievable ways. But it all begins with a man, Mr. Art...

I first got into Charles Dickens, because I watched some adaptations of his novels on TV. I believe the first one was Little Dorrit, which my friend and I watched a number of times during our 4 month Asia trip. She had bought the DVD set and a portable player and we utilized this during any down time. The series was so beautifully made that it was easily able to stand a re-watch (or many) and when we came to a bigger book store we hunted down copies of the book and started reading. And   I loved it! Charles Dickens is a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. I LOVE some of his books like “David Copperfield”, “Bleak House”, “Nicholas Nickleby" and “Little Dorrit", but some of his other most notable works I really don’t like, e.g. “A Tale of Two Cities”and “Great Expectations”.  Dickens was born in 1812, and at a young age he had to leave school to work in a factory, as his father was imprisoned for debt. Despite this lack of formal education he wrote and edited thousands of pag...

Like many of Remarque’s books this one is about war. More specifically this is about the experiences of a group of prisoners in a concentration camp in Germany during the last few months of World War II.   It is mostly told from the point of view of a prisoner called 509. But we also hear from other prisoners and some of the Nazi men running the camp. They tell us a story of human resistance, cruelty and finding the good in one self even under the worst of circumstances.  The story is about a small group of prisoners called the Veterans. These men have been in the camp for years and years and most of them seem just about to give up, when news start spreading about the Allied invasion. In the camp there is a resistance movement, and the Veterans start working together with these men, and soon hope spreads that a different ending to this story is possible.  509 is the main character, and having read many a Remarque novel, I knew that chances were slim that he w...

Remarque is the author of one of my absolute favorite novels; “All Quiet on the Western Front”. I have read some of his other books too, and liked quite a few of them very well. This wasn’t in the cards when I first read Remarque though. It was in high school and an excerpt of the very book that would since be my favorite was part of an essay assignment. We could choose between 6 different topics and the excerpt was one of them. I actually think I picked that one, as the least sucky of the 6, wrote my paper and never thought of it again. I can’t actually remember how I got around to reading the full novel, but once I did I was in love. Since then I have read a few more of his books and always bring “All Quiet on the Western Front” with me when I travel, as it can stand a re-read (or several).   Below is a list of all his works (from Wikipedia ). The first date is the publishing date and the second date is the publishing date for the English translation. I have read quite a few...

As anyone would, I have a few favorite authors. Some are pretty well known and loved, like J.K. Rowling, some are known, but perhaps not loved as much as I think they should be such as Jane Austen and Erich Maria Remarque. So I have decided to share my favorites with all the world! It could even be interesting for me, since I am what they call a casual fan. If I enjoy a book, or a piece of music, or a film or anything at all really, I am pretty much content just enjoying that work. I’ll probably seek out other work of the same person, but I am not one to memorize details of a person’s life, or look for all the Easter eggs in a Disney movie, or any such thing. I am way too lazy for that. So I don’t necessarily know a lot about my favorite authors aside from the books they have written and I have enjoyed. So this should be educational for me too! Sometimes knowing the back story of the author might help you understand the book in a different way too, which should be a bonus. I look...