Another pointless thread

'What Christmas Is As We Grow Older', from Household Words 1851 link. A bit Dickensian, but understandable seeing as it was written by Dickens. And we thought that Dickens' Christmas was all about snow, roast goose and big parties with the entire family...

Steve

To my eternal shame I find Dickens impossible to read whereas I have consumed volumes of his contemporary Trollope. I have tried, I really have, but it is like hacking your way through forest undergrowth with so many asides and diversions the thread you are trying to follow keeps vanishing. I find myself inwardly shouting "for goodness sake get to the point!" Every year the family watches one of the several Christmas Carol videos and I have the book somewhere, so I will try and see if I can get past the first couple of pages.

Me too! We had Pickwick Papers as the set book for School Certificate and it put me right off Dickens for the rest of my life. I won a prize once at school. What did they give me? Some ruddy book by Dickens! I never read it and can't even remember which one it is.

Had to do "A Tale of Two Cities" for "O" level English Lit - did "OK" in the exam, but can't remember ever reading many, if any, other Dickens novels as I was far more "taken" by all sorts of SciFi books (one of which, somewhat later, helped me to a "semi-reasonable" degree at Uni with a question in my Finals - having read it a few days beforehand to "escape" exam pressure)!

I simply cannot comprehend how people can wax lyrical over the genre termed "literature" ! My first introductions were also at school with English, French and Spanish classics. All of them would spend pages writing what most of us would say in two sentences. Did people in bygone times really converse in such a convoluted manner? Did they all spend several eternities agonizing over trifles? On the other hand, these were the times when clerks were paid by their written verbosity rather than for their clarity of expression.

David, they mostly had servants to do the menial chores we occupy our time with like cooking and cleaning, they didn’t have television to waste away hours in front of, and everything moved at a much more leisurely pace. Ergo these writings were time fillers from a time when people had much longer attention spans than today. Look at how much faster film and tv dramas are cut now, how unfeasibly fast American tv people talk, our quick grab of news in sound bites on our phones and snippets garnered on YouTube videos. We are so inured to this that works from earlier times seem slow and tedious.

Sorry, what was that?

I can't read more than 6 wor

Seriously, I did Lorna Doon at school, that put me off reading for a long time, it was a certain Terry Pratchet that taught me the value of the written word.

A pleasure I shared with my children who, even now, still refer to certain characters when the need arises...

Oh, and Mrs HG is, and always has been, an avid reader.

Sorry for any duff spelling, typed this waiting for the kettle to b

Fully understand you meant waiting for the still to start boiling......

The redoubtable Mr Dickens, a stalwart of the written word in his time, was reputed to have been paid one penny (1d) per word. Therefore, some good and some bad happened becomes they were the best of times, they were the worst of times.......and so on, and on and on......

I never attempted Dickens but I did try one author who included far more than he should......Tolkien

The Bete Noirs of my English A level were Henry James and T S Eliot; every now and then I have a go at T.S.E.’s poems but after a lifetime I still don’t get what the hell he is on about half the time - probably because he was a right show-off who kept lapsing into Greek! My tastes now are more lowbrow with Ian Rankin being favourite closely followed by C J Sansom and several others, I love getting lost in historical thrillers. Time to sow a few hints with Christmas coming!

Christmas ia coming??!

I thought it had been can..

...oh wait, we may be able to meet up for 5 days then have another lockdown..

..well, we've postponed Christmas, until next summer when we'll be outside and well and truly happy.

Well it beats racing up the M6 on a dark wet Christmas morning only to return next day sans champagne, cake and game pie like the last few years. I am looking forward to lockdown Christmas!

As long as I can have my big over-decorated tree and a glass of good scotch, I'll be happy. As we won't have guests this year, I might even manage a walk and try to use up some of the burgeoning film stash...