Classics Club: December Meme

By -
The Classics Club's December question is remarkably specific!

What is your favorite memory of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Have you ever read it? If not, will you? Why should others read it rather than relying on the film adaptions?

I have read A Christmas Carol a couple of times, and I've read it aloud to my kids.  It's not that easy for kids to understand the story, actually, unless they're older; Dickens uses a lot of circumlocutions and fancy words like circumlocutions. The story has several wonderful depictions of domestic life in Victorian times, but that life was so different from ours, and contained so many now-disused words, that it's not an easy story for children.

I do think people should read it, of course, but to be honest I've preferred a couple of the film versions.   It's a story that is naturally suited to film--if Dickens had been around for the 20th century, I bet he would have made this a movie!  He was so dramatic anyway.  I usually prefer for kids to read books before they see the movies, but in this case I'm OK with doing it the other way around.

I like two Christmas Carol films.  The 1951 version that everyone likes, with Alastair Sim (look, the whole thing is on Youtube, and beautifully clear), and the Muppet Christmas Carol, which is really wonderfully done.  Oh, and Blackadder's Christmas Carol, of course, but I'm not sure that counts!

 

Comments

  1. MabelDecember 8, 2012 at 1:02 PM

    I so agree that Dickens would have gotten into film, if he'd lived in our era. I so often think, "I was born in the wrong era," meaning I should have been born in the past. I wonder how many people in the past would have preferred to live now? (Obviously, I like living now, too though. Because I'd dislike suddenly no longer existing, since the 1800s are over!) :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 8, 2012 at 1:37 PM

    I often think that the best way to experience this book was probably to see Dickens read it. He was so theatrical! It's definitely a story that lends itself to a dramatic, visual telling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanDecember 8, 2012 at 4:44 PM

    A lot of them, I bet! Especially the ones who got diphtheria. I sometimes think like you, too, but them I remember I would have just died in childbirth...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ruth @ with freedom and booksDecember 10, 2012 at 7:58 AM

    This is the second Christmas my children have asked me to read A Christmas Carol to them. We just finished last week.

    Last year I also took them to see a play version, which helped to cement the memory, even if they do not understand everything.

    And today we are actually going to see an actor perform all 46 characters by himself at our local library.

    The more they are exposed to it, even in different forms, the more they love it b/c it becomes a part of them.

    P.S. They also asked me to get a film version. So thank you for your suggestions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AODecember 10, 2012 at 7:50 PM

    hi Jean! i saw several versions and spin-offs before i read the book. nothing beats the original novel of course although i agree with you that it's not an easy one for children to read.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 13, 2012 at 6:58 AM

    I suppose the themes in the novel, ( I remember vaguely) being suitable for kids as well will do well played or acted out on screen. But then, reading a novel and then watchign the film later can clarify certain aspects better, though that will also depend on the directing etc.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownJanuary 2, 2013 at 2:35 PM

    I'm not as well-versed in movie renditions of the story as you are! I know I must have seen some when I was a child, but I can't remember ever seeing a full-length movie of it.

    My December meme

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more