The Girl Who Was on Fire

Allie mentioned The Girl Who Was on Fire in her post about the unit she taught on The Hunger Games, and I thought it would be fun to read. It's a collection of essays from young adult authors about The Hunger Games. It's worth reading if you're a hardcore fan or if, like in Allie's case, you're planning on teaching it.

One of the themes through several of the essays is that it's not about the love story. The main conversation shouldn't center on Team Gale vs. Team Peeta. Personally, I don't feel like the conversation has centered on that, which is what these essays seem to imply. Although, I don't usually talk about them with teenage girls either, so perhaps they're having different conversations than I am! However, at the same time, several stories veered off into an argument defending Katniss's choice at the end. This annoyed me, especially since I disagree. :)

A lot of the essays focused on politics, freedom and reality TV. That's what interested me the most in the series, being able see how Collins took real issues from today's society and showed how they could turn into this crazy world of the future. That's why I love dystopian fiction. I also hate reality TV, so a whole series about how terrible the genre is makes me happy.

On that note, it reminded me of how horrified I was at the audience reaction at some of the scenes. People cheered and laughed at several violent death scenes. It was bad enough that Ryan and I actually turned to each other and said, "did that just happen???" I was appalled to be in the same theatre as these people and couldn't believe they were not only entirely missing the point, they were sadist crazy people disguised as normal human beings. It completely creeped me out. It made it seem more feasible that our society would allow something like The Hunger Games to actually happen.

While I enjoyed this, it really made me crave more academic literary criticism. I may have to take advantage of Ryan's access to a college library to check out some books along those lines. Because I don't already have a million books checked out from the public library and towering in my TBR stacks. :)

Dickens: A Life

For my third post for Amanda's Charles Dickens Month celebration I expected to write a glowing review of Claire Tomalin's Dickens: A Life. Sadly this is not meant to be. I've been on the waiting list at the library forever to get this one, and it was the only library book I was going to let myself read as an exception to CB's TBR Double Dare (because it finally came in Dec. 30). Unfortunately, I only read/skimmed about the first 100 pages.

I think part of the problem is that I'm already fairly familiar with Dickens' life, even though I've never read a full biography on him. I studied him pretty in depth in one of my master's level classes, and most of the information in this section wasn't new to me. I would have kept skimming and just reading the new-to-me bits, but I HATED that Tomalin kept throwing in spoilers without warning.

Fortunately, the spoliers I saw were all for books I'd already read (thankfully I'd just finished Oliver Twist!) and for The Old Curiousity Shop, which I hadn't read but that had already been spoiled for me. She just seems to assume anyone reading has already read all of Dickens' works, which was annoying. She should have at least given some sort of warning upfront since presumably many people pick up author biographies when they haven't read an author's complete works.

So, consider this your warning! If you're interested in reading a biography on Dickens, only pick this one up if you're okay with spoilers. (Does anyone else picture River Song every time they use the word "spoilers"?)

Why We Read

I’ve read several works lately that focus on why and how we read. The first year Ryan and I were married, I dragged him to a library book sale and he got sucked into the silent auction. We ended up coming up with a complete set of the Great Books of the Western World and the Gateways to the Great Books (meant to help you get started with short stories or shorter works by some of the authors in the Great Books set). Those were “his” books, while I bought bags full of “my” books. I’m a lucky girl.  Sadly, these great books have mostly sat unread on our shelves just looking pretty. I’ve read some of the novels in other forms – these are hard backs with tiny print – and some of the ancient Greek works. As these sets make up a good chunk of my TBR stacks, I started with the introduction to both sets.


The intro to the Great Books set is called The Great Conversation. I thought this was fitting, because while reading it I also read Reading for Pleasure in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs, which actually references the editor, Mortimer Adler, of the Great Books/The Great Conversation multiple times and basically argues with him. This made for an interesting reading experience! I really felt like I was having a conversation – I’d read some of Adler’s points and then read some of Jacob’s points and go back to Adler while agreeing with and arguing with both of them.

So, what were their points? Adler argues that everyone should read the Great Books. These are a foundation for all learning and understanding and after reading them you will be better equipped to read anything. He rants about the education system and how it’s not focused on reading whole works and we’re too distracted by TV to read anything anymore – and he’s writing in the early 60s! I hate to think what he’d be thinking now.

Jacobs, on the other hand, thinks people should read on a whim and for pleasure, not because someone told them that this or that book is one they should read. He dislikes lists like the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die and anything that tries to say there are certain books you should read. He also doesn’t really think you can teach someone to love reading, which he admits is an odd stance for an English literature professor.

For me, there are pieces of both philosophies that I agree with. I agree with Jacobs in that I think by pushing students to believe that only reading certain works really counts and focusing on works that usually aren’t the best classics out there, we make reading feel like a chore. It’s something to do so you can be smart or well read or because you’re supposed to, not because it’s simply fun.

However, like Adler, I do think we should teach everyone to appreciate the classics. That doesn’t mean everyone will end up a life-long classics reader, but they should be exposed to Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks and many others. I disagree with him that everyone should read everything in the Great Books –even I’m not looking forward to trying several authors, such as Euclid and some of the other math and science focused authors. I think if we tried to force everyone to read those in school we’d have even more people who never read again.

I do think there are ways to use the classics to show students you can read for pleasure. I think teachers should choose books that have interesting stories instead of just works that are the ones that tend to get taught. For example, Hamlet gets taught a lot in high school, but it’s not the Shakespeare play that I think would appeal most to high school students. Why not try Othello instead? Teenagers are living with revenge and manipulation and love triangles every day – they can relate. Relating to Hamlet whining about his dead father and his uncle shacking up with his mom and possibly having killed his father? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong – I love Hamlet. However, when I read it the first time in high school even I – who enjoyed classics even then – was irritated by Hamlet and didn’t enjoy it.

I enjoyed this passage of Adler’s: “The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandist or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves.”

How many problems would the world be able to solve if people read the classics to strengthen their minds, improve their logic and really learn how to think? Then again, how many people who have read the classics fall on both sides of the political aisle? And I can’t help but think about my husband, who doesn’t read that often (despite buying the Great Books set), but is the smarter person I know. Although, he did read Homer and Virgil when he was in junior high so he did still have that foundation, so Adler and Jacobs could both use him to argue their points, I think.

While Jacobs argues that reading should first and foremost be for pleasure, at the same time, he turns right around and makes some of the same arguments Adler does. He talks of the importance of the liberal arts education and teaching students how to think so that they can continue to learn throughout life. He complains that schools are set up with the assumption that students will not continue to learn once they graduate. He also talks about reading slower and more reflectively rather than rushing forward to read the next book on the list, which is actually something I think Adler would agree with.

Adler mentions that he thinks schools focus too much on socialization and the inefficiencies in the system keep kids in school longer than they should. He believes we could easily trim 2-4 years off the current system by removing busy work and not teaching to the lowest denominator, allowing students to start and finish college much earlier. I remember being so bored through most of my schooling, and definitely agree that it could have been condensed. I think this would encourage more people to go to college too, because you could take longer to finish college if you’re working and paying your own way and still be very young when you finish, or you could move through college and advanced degrees and become a doctor or Ph.D while still in your early 20s.

I seem to fall somewhere in the middle of Jacobs and Adler – I enjoy using lists such as the Great Books to guide my reading and discover new works, but they don’t rule my reading. Much of my reading is done on a whim and is purely for entertainment. I think you need a bit of both in life.

I think there’s enough in these works for several blog posts, and I may end up continuing to write about these books, but for now I’ll close with this quote Jacobs used from a graduation speech David Foster Wallace gave: “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.”

How/why do you read? Do you follow lists, read on a whim, or both?

How to Read a Novel

Not quite sure why I picked up a book called How to Read a Novel when I haven't even had time to read lately, but I did. The new job is going well, but I've got a longer commute I'm adjusting to and I'm simultaneously trying to start a new marketing focused blog and co-launch a leadership blog and write a book. And my high school reunion was last night. So it's been a little crazy, and I've clearly lost my mind. I think it's because I have so much more energy since quitting my old job and so I'm going crazy starting new projects but not actually finishing anything. I've even started a half dozen new books instead of finishing the ones I was already reading. Being able to walk to the library on my lunch break isn't helping in that area either. I can walk to our large downtown library and browse and read. Unfortunately I've been doing too much browsing and not enough reading.
One book I did manage to finish this week is How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland. I did enjoy this book, but let me tell you, the title is all wrong. It should be How to Buy a Novel or How to Try to Select Novels or something. Since I flipped through it before checking it out at the library I knew what I was getting, but I can see that being off putting to people if you didn't look inside a little more closely.
Sutherland gives suggestions on what to look for in a novel when you're browsing so you can decide if it's worth devoting your limited reading time too. My favorite tip was to turn to page 69 and read it and if you like it, you'll probably like the whole book. People tend to bring their A game to page 1, and by page 69 they've probably burned out if they're going to or hit their stride.
I'll be honest, most of the rest of the advice was kind of not helpful. He mainly said that you can't really trust anything - not the flap, certainly not the quotes, not reviews, not best seller lists. So, to be honest, I didn't really feel like this book was overly helpful in doing what it was supposed to do - tell me how to select novels I'll enjoy reading. And he seems rather anti-Harry Potter so I hold that against him.
However, I liked the book. Sutherland was at his best when he just rambled about books. He packed in a ton of examples of various books, and I enjoyed reading those portions, getting his take on different things. It made me think I would enjoy reading his book reviews. I think that's really where he is strength is. And I was quite happy to note that his one book he would take to a deserted island (excluding the Bible or Shakespeare) would be Vanity Fair. That's one of my all-time favorite books! I was a little surprised because his book tastes seem to run to the more recent, uber-literary types, so I was excited about his choice and explanation.
I found it interesting that during one of his ramblings, he said he thinks all fiction readers fall into one of two camps: you like either Thackeray or Dickens. He admits you can like both (which I indeed do) but that you'll tend to read books that are more like one or the other. He said Thackeray is more conversational, as though the author is telling you a story. Dickens is more theatrical, where you sit and watch the action unfold. That probably does explain why I do prefer Thackeray, and thinking about it, I do prefer books that are more conversational, like the author is sitting next to you telling a story. Swift does this, and Picoult, and Austen, and the Brontes. Those are some of my favorite authors. The Great Gatsby. I like narrators. With Dickens, you feel a little removed from the story. It's more like watching a play/TV show/movie. That may be why a lot of people don't enjoy him as much these days. I felt that way about the works I've read (which isn't much!) of Faulkner and Woolf.
Well, I feel like this blog post was rather a nice tribute to Sutherland since it rather rambles on as well. I'm not sure if this post is helpful in determining if you'll like this book or not. Maybe if you liked the post you'll like the book and vice versa. Regardless, I hope you find great books to read this week! And let me know what you think about the Dickens vs. Thackeray issue. I'm interested to know what you think!

How Reading Changed My Life

How Reading Changed My Life is a collection of essays by Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite contemporary writers. I love reading about other people reading, so I jumped at the chance to read this book. I enjoyed all of the essays and seeing similarities between myself and someone I admire. If you enjoy reading about other readers and fell in love with Francie Nolan because she loves the library and makes plans to read through the whole thing alphabetically, this book’s for you. (Quindlen wrote an introduction to a recent edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the wonderful book featuring Francie, which is one of my all-time favorite books and made me like Quindlen all the more.)

This book made me think about my own experience with reading. My first memories are of learning to read (although my very first memory is of me jumping of the counter and splitting my chin on a metal Carebears trash can). I remember realizing that the black marks on the pages meant something, that they were telling my mom what to say. And so since I wanted to be independent even at three, I begged my mom to teach me how to understand them. She thought it would be fun to teach me a little bit of the alphabet, expecting to get to about D and give up for the day, but I learned the entire alphabet that day. And then immediately began putting the new information into practice with Dr. Suess and a few other simple picture books. And I’ve never looked back! (And if you’re a mom reading this and you’re a bit jealous of my mom, don’t worry, she got major payback from my brother. And he still turned out just fine despite learning to read much later and never learning to enjoy it.)

I, on the other hand, can’t really remember not loving to read. In first grade when we had a reading contest, I won by hundreds of books. We got Easter eggs to put on the wall for every book we read, and the poor teacher could barely keep up with me. I read twice as many books as the rest of the class combined. Fortunately for me and my social standing for the rest of my schooling, when teased about my nerdiness I was rather quick with my fist and good at insulting people. This saved me from really getting slapped with the nerd label. Ironically, it was that mouth and stubborn streak that caused a huge a fight with a friend later on in elementary school that left me turning to books for comfort, befriending all of the girls in the Baby-Sitters Club series. And they stuck with me much longer the friend who I eventually made up with.

The first really literary book I read that wasn’t some sort of abridged kid’s version of Huck Finn was Wuthering Heights. Their moodiness struck a chord with me in junior high and introduced me to a whole new world of books: classics and books that don’t end with happily ever after. And I still love to read books that my mom always deems depressing. But they allow me to feel something I may not otherwise (hopefully never in some cases) feel. They teach us how different people react to things, guiding us in how we react when faced with something similar. They allow us to travel the world, experience other cultures, and try new things from the comfort of our arm chairs. Quindlen makes a similar comment in the book, and notes that actually traveling this way is many times preferable to actual travel. I think that’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t too disappointed when we decided to postpone our trip to London that we were supposed to take at the end of last year. With the crazy economy and uncertainty and layoffs happening at work, we decided it would be better to get a refund and have that cash on hand in case something happened on go later. A part of me was actually relieved because I’m afraid that the real London can’t possibly hold a candle to the one in my head. Especially since the one in my head is fairly Victorian only with a better sewage and trash system and air conditioning. Modern London, with teenagers in jeans with iPhones and business people hurrying to their next meeting, isn’t what I’m envisioning. I’ll still go someday, probably sooner than later, but until then I’ll always have my books.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money

Shakespeare Wrote for Money made me fall a little bit in love with Nick Hornby. I knew nothing about him before reading this, but for some reason I had the impression he would be rather pretentious and literary in an annoying way, like he's trying to hard. Instead, I loved it! He wasn't like that at all. This is actually what I thought I would feel about Ex Libris, which is I was really looking forward reading, and I almost took this back to the library unread. I am so glad I didn't!
Shakespeare Wrote for Money is a collection of essays from Hornby's Stuff I'm Reading column in Believer magazine. Hornby is not at all stuck up and was actually quite funny and entertaining. And he likes books that are also entertaining. They may also be literary, but he prefers the non-boring books. My favorite part of the book was when he talks about the Alex Awards, which are awarded to the top 10 books each year that were written for adults but that would appeal to young adults. In Hornby's words, they are therefore not-boring books. And shouldn't everyone want to read those? Then he rattled off some titles of his own favorite not-boring books, and he included I Capture the Castle, one of my all-time favorites.
I also enjoyed the first essay, where he talks about his desire to move to Oxford, MS, and sit on a veranda and walk to Faulkner's house. My advisor for my undergrad degree specialized in Faulkner and studied at Ole Miss, so with that and the picture of this Londoner wanting to move to Mississippi was quite funny.
The good and not-so-good part of this book was that I kept adding more and more books to my want-to-read list, which is already stuffed full at the moment. And I want to read them all RIGHT NOW. I think that's why I tend to read so many books at once, because I want to eat them all up and make sure I don't miss one and it makes me feel like I'm making more progress.
Hornby mentions a friend of his who takes a few days between finishing books to let the book sink in. I was immediately horrified - think of all the wasted time! Apparently Hornby agrees: "Those of us who read neurotically, however - to ward off boredom, and the fear of our own ignorance, and our impending deaths - can't afford the time."
I think that explains my need to read so many books at once - what if I need that random fact on page 34 of the book about the Tolkien tomorrow, and I make myself finish The Lacuna first? What if I die tomorrow without having read a word of Hilary Mantel? Shouldn't I at least start Wolf Hall so I have at least read a little bit? What if there's something better out there than the book I'm reading right now and I miss it because I'm struggling through this one? And so I end up reading 10 books at once. I have done a much better job of this so far this year though. Until last week I was limiting myself to two at once, but I couldn't seem to focus last week and kept hopping around. It's mainly non-fiction so it's not a big deal, but I'm still trying to not let myself reach double digits. It got so out of control at one point last year that I stopped to count how many books I was currently reading (and had read something of in the last six weeks) and once I reached 20 I stopped counting. I made myself sit down and go through one at a time to finish them all quickly and get that calmed down a bit. Since I finished Shakespeare Wrote for Money this morning, I'm only in the middle of three right now - Plum Bun, Enchanted (about Audrey Hepburn), and Orlando. Oh. And Inventing English. So four. I guess I got up to five yesterday, but I'm finishing Plum Bun tonight so I can review it tomorrow for the Classics Circuit and then I'll be back down to three.
Anyway, I adored Shakespeare Wrote for Money and look forward to reading many of the books he discussed and more Hornby.

Ex Libris

I expected to love Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. I think that I assumed that since she loves reading enough to write a book about it, I would feel an immediate affinity with her. But I just didn't connect with her. Something about her writing made me feel like I was being held at arm's length.
I did enjoy a few things, for example, when she talks about people who treat books as precious objects never to be marred in any way (courtly lovers) versus people who physically love their books, making notes in them, leaving them on pause by placing them open, face-down until you return (carnal lovers), I am like her and am a carnal book lover. Spines, in the case of books, are meant to be broken. You can tell my favorite paperbacks by their well worn spines. And until recently I never used real bookmarks. I'd leave the book open or grab whatever was at hand, usually a tissue, a scrap of paper, a pen, another book.
I also enjoyed how she talked about owning books, and was good at creating images of houses overflowing with books. That's how I want my house to be.
I also appreciated having a book of essays to read this week. I've been slammed at work, preparing for my company's annual conference in two weeks and shooting four commercials on top of my regular duties. I've been too drained to concentrate on much at a time at home because my mind keeps flickering to all I need to do. I'm hoping to spend the day reading tomorrow to help relax and be refreshed.
But despite this, I found myself skimming some of the essays and feeling disconnected.

Modern Fiction

My reading of Mrs. Dalloway and my plan to continue with the Woolf in Winter read-a-long inspired me to look up Ms. Woolf in my trusty Norton anthology. I read the introduction and overview, and then read her essay Modern Fiction. In it, she explains her thoughts on, obviously, modern fiction. She talks about her writing style and the progress of writing fiction. In what written in 1925, the same year as Mrs. Dalloway. I don't normally post quotes, because I'm not really a quote person for some reason, but there were a few passages I found especially interesting.

"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel." That's a perfect little summary of what she does in Mrs. Dalloway.

"[I]f he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no lover interest or catastrophe in the accepted style...Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?" Again, she gives a good description of what she's trying to do with Mrs. Dalloway, and what I have heard she goes even further with in To the Lighthouse. Mrs. Dalloway doesn't have a plot in the traditional sense, and Woolf does convey the story through a series of thoughts, allowing us to judge and connect with the characters based on their thoughts, instead of their actions alone. I think that's part of why there are such strong reactions on both ends of the spectrum for the various characters. You are in their heads, you know their thoughts, so that helps you understand why someone does something you don't like, and you can justify liking someone whose actions you don't care for because you know where they are coming from. Conversely, a character might not do anything you don't like, but you may not like them from their thoughts.

"Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any other of these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see." Well, that explains why Joyce is difficult to read! I've read The Portrait of the Artist as a Young man twice, once in high school where I hated it and once in college. The first time, it was the first modernist piece of literature I had read. The lack of "signposts" challenged me greatly, and I couldn't understand why someone would write that way. The second time around, my college professor did a much better job of setting up modernism and as I already knew what to expect and was a more experienced reader, I actually ended up enjoying it. I plan to attempt Ulysses at some point, but haven't been brave enough yet. It's funny that Woolf mentions having read Portrait, and that his latest work, Ulysses, "promises to be a far more interesting work."

"'The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss." I am glad that I read Mrs. Dalloway for the first time after having come to accept this, because I think that allowed me to enjoy it more. It also made me more likely to read other modernists, because it gave me a focal point other than Joyce and Nathanael West (who I'm not sure is technically a modernist).

Biblioholism

If you love books, and have ever been accused of owning too many, Biblioholism by Tom Raabe is for you. Although it's a little uneven, I really the good parts were worth it.
Why I say it's uneven is because I loved the first five chapters, but then lost interest in the next several. Then it picks up again around chapter 10. So, it's two-thirds awesome, which is still pretty good. And it's easy to just skim the middle if you'd like.
Now for the good stuff. I am definitely a book collector. Not in a rare book kind of way, but in a lots and lots of books kind of way. I completely identified with the book. I have a tendency to come out of bookstores with more books than I can carry. I wonder why book stores don't have shopping carts. I attend library book sales with multiple bags to stuff full. I have an entire room devoted to books, my own personal library. And shelves in other rooms too. Yeah, it's bad. I've even done the whole accidentally buy a second copy of a book you already own thing. I ignore household chores in favor of reading. I have books strewn all over the house, in every room. I have the tell-tell head tilt to the right symptom. That cracked me up because I've had people point out that I do that frequently, and the book says that because we spend so much time browsing books and have to tilt it to the right to read the spines better.
I also thought the part about reading while traveling was funny. I always travel with multiple books. Even if I'm just going away for a few days. For a four-day trip, I often take six books. The book said it takes most people a couple of hours to pack their clothes, and minutes to throw in a couple of books. It takes biblioholics a few minutes to throw in clothes and several hours to pack books! That's totally me. And I even try to trick myself. I'll promise myself that I'll only pack three books, but then an hour or so later, I sneak in another one that doesn't really count because it's a book for work. And then another because I might be really tired at night and just want a romance novel. And then I think about what if my first flight gets delayed and I end up missing my second flight and have to hang out in the airport forever. So I sneak another one in to a side pocket just in case. I'm not sure why I always end up doing it that way, but I do. And sadly I pack that many books even when I just take a carry on, which I usually try to do. My coworkers all stand in amazement and awe of me for my mad packing skills. Although they think I'm slightly insane for packing so many books.
So, in the end, it was nice to read about someone as crazy about books as me. But, I'm glad I got this from the library since it was a little uneven, so I'm glad I I'm trying to cure my book buying habit with library usage!

Pictures of my bookshelves:

The Well-Educated Mind

I've noticed that quite a few bloggers are talking about reading deliberately is one of their goals for this year. When I started Mrs. Dalloway, I was rushing through it and realized I seemed to be missing something, and decided to refresh my memory about modernism and stream of consciousness to see if that helped me read below the surface a bit. When I did, one of the books I pulled all my shelf was The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. I realized this is a great book for anyone wanting to read more deliberately.
Bauer is a professor at the College of William and Mary, homeschools her kids, and writes a ton of books. She's writing a whole history of the world series, the latest book of which I'll review in a few weeks. She's insanely smart. Anyway, this book focuses on how to read different types of works - novel, history/political, poetry, drama, and autobiography/memoir. She has tips on questions to ask yourself, things to look for, and journaling. She has very specific steps for each type of work. Plus, it has background info on each genre, and information on reading in general. The end of the book has an annotated bibliography, with suggestions for the best edition of the work. It's a great reference book, and I find myself pulling it out fairly often. So, if you're one of the people who made it a goal to read more deliberately this year, I highly recommend picking up a copy of it!

The Man Who Invented Christmas

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford was not what I had expected. I did get some information I enjoyed from it, but I was disappointed overall. The subtitle is How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. I expected the whole book to be about that - what happened after A Christmas Carol came out and how it affected Dickens and our society. But the first third of the book was a general biography of Dickens. I understand giving some basic info as a background for the rest of the story, but a third of the book? That just seemed odd. Then, we finally get to A Christmas Carol, and get another third that's really more about publishing. It focused on how Dickens had to publish it himself, and had a lot of details about how that worked and his relationship with his publishers and how all of that worked back then. The the last third is when we finally get info on how people responded to it, the lasting impacts, and how it changed Dickens's career. That part was interesting, but it just took so long to get too. If you read this, check it out from the library (like I did) and then just start about two-thirds in, or just know what you'll be getting with the first part.
I did learn (or was reminded of) a few fun facts in the first part of the book. Oliver Twist can be considered the first Victorian novel and it's also the first novel with a child as the main character. Also, Dickens was selling his books to about 1/4 to 1/5 of the reading public! That's amazing. Issues of his serials sometimes sold 100,000 copies, which is what most of the NY Times best seller average.
Once we finally get to the Christmas section, Standiford tells us how Dickens created the tradition of turkey for Christmas dinner and ruined the goose industry. Prior to A Christmas Carol, most people had goose at Christmas dinner, but Scrooge buys a turkey for the Cratchits and it's been the most popular choice ever since. It was also interesting how prior to the Victorian age, Christmas wasn't widely celebrated. Easter was the big Christian holiday, since the day of Christ's birth wasn't (and still isn't) known. Christians took over the holiday in hopes of turning the pagan celebration of Saturnalia into something more pure. It grew during the Victorian times through both Dickens and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Albert was German, and made the tradition of the Christmas tree popular in England. So, I learned a few things, but overall was a little disappointed. It would have been better if it had a different title so you weren't expecting something else.