Tag: Classics

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Review: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

by The Lit Bitch7 Comments on Review: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Bah humbug! The snow is falling, Christmas carolers are in the streets London, dinner is in the oven, families are laughing around the fire, and Ebenezer Scrooge is busy ‘bah humbug-ing’ everyones Christmas cheer!

In the timeless classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is visited by three ghosts: Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. The ghosts are sent to help Scrooge realize the importance of giving, being thankful, and of course being merry during the holiday season.

I decided to read this book for both the Victorian Literature and the Christmas Spirit reading challenges since I have never actually read the classic novel.

As a child I remember watching the Muppets version of this book but that’s about it….and I just have to go on record….I love the Muppets Christmas Carol! I know lots of families read this book to their families every year as part of their holiday tradition as it is relatively short (surprisingly for a Victorian era novel….and a Dickens novel!)

Needless to say I was really excited to start it especially during the holidays….something to get me really excited for Christmas. Continue reading “Review: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens” →

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Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

by The Lit Bitch18 Comments on Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Like the misty, whispering moors of northern England, Emily Bronte’s one and only novel, gets under your skin….tapping oh so quietly on the lattice window like Cathy asking that you only let it in to come home. Every Thanksgiving break I read Wuthering Heights, don’t ask me why but somehow it became part of a holiday tradition but this year I was able to enjoy it knowing I was also reading it as part of both the Victorian Literature Reading Challenge and the Gothic Literature Reading challenges.

I had hoped to read loads more Victorian novels this year but sadly I don’t think I will satisfy my original challenge goal of 15 books, but I was able to read a fair few on my list….I guess there is always next year though. But when I started the challenge, I knew I would read this book…there is no denying that which one loves.

Some people talk of the moors like they are a mystical and enchanting place  perhaps they are….a place that even if you move far away, the moorland winds keep calling you back to the only place where you can ever truly be free….home.  I include myself in this analogy, though I am not a Yorkshire native by any long stretch of the measure but at times, the moors seem like a place that I could call home. Perhaps that’s why I love novels set on the moors…my mother would say that is my ‘Irish spirit’ longing for it’s homeland….not sure about that (sorry mom) but I do love the misty moors.

The moorlands are among some of the most solitary lands on earth….there is little society and much isolation. The moorland isolation provides one freedom though….a wild, untamed spirit. Perhaps that’s why even when people leave the moors they always find them calling them home no matter how far away they are. In Yorkshire there is one saucy, wild, moorland child who is nothing but a force of nature: Catherine Earnshaw. Continue reading “Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte” →

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Review: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

by The Lit Bitch11 Comments on Review: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Facts. What are the simple facts of a story? How much background, story, context, and fact does one need when assessing a mystery?

Imagine for a minute that you are a jury or perhaps an investigator of a mystery, what facts would you want? What are important? What would influence your decision? That’s what happens in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins…we get the facts of a case presented to us from various sources and we must assess the facts and piece the story together through intricate statements/narratives by the main characters.

When I first started The Woman in White, I had my doubts. I was worried that the format would be confusing and hard to get into….slow going with lots of background ‘fluff’ like Collins’s counterpart, Charles Dickens. I was surprised how easily everything flowed and how quickly the story started. The story is told in a unique format (an epistolary novel) meaning it is a told through a series of letters and/or journal entries, and in this case testimonies…much similar to another Victorian/Gothic classic Bram Stokers Dracula. While it is clearly a classic Victorian and gothic sensationalism novel it is also widely acclaimed as one of the first detective novels of the time.

The novel jumps right into the story without a whole lot of long eloquent Victorian wordiness, beginning with the primary narrator, drawing master Walter Hartright. Hartright meets a young woman dressed all in white late at night on a deserted road back to London. From there he finds out the woman has escaped from a nearby asylum in order to pass a message along to a mysterious baronet, though Hartright helps her to escape detection he expects never to see her again but somehow he cannot forget the ghostly figure. Eventually his life and the woman in white’s become entangled forever through two ‘sisters’, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe. Continue reading “Review: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins” →

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Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

by The Lit Bitch5 Comments on Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Well it’s taken me a few months but I have finally finished Great Expectations! Yes I know I started it like months ago and have been slowly trying to finish it up between the move and other books I’ve been reading.

I started reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for the Gothic Literature Reading Challenge, I had it down to read for the Victorian Literature Reading Challenge also but I decided to use it for the Gothic one since it had a lot of classic Gothic themes which I love.

I have struggled with reading Dickens over the years only because I think he is wordy and often his stories seem a little slow to start.

However, last year I read the book Drood which is a fiction work based on two English literary greats…Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. After reading that book I was curious about Dickens’s life and works. After signing up for both the Victorian and Gothic literature challenges having some Dickens novels on my ‘to read’ lists was a no brainer.  Continue reading “Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens” →

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Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by The Lit Bitch5 Comments on Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

I decided to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as part of the Victorian Literature Challenge.

I have read Heart of Darkness before for a Comparative/Literary Criticism class in college. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care for it much then and I didn’t care for it reading it again two years later. Though I hoped that not having to write a paper on the book and not having to deconstruct the entire concepts would help me be able to get into it more but I was sadly disappointed.

Conrad’s novel is an interesting specimen in literature, it is more of a transitional book that has a foot in the Victorian era but also has a foot in modern literature. The book is about one man’s journey into madness while he travels the Congo.

The main character (Charles Marlow) is on the Themes on a boat waiting for the tide to change, he beings to tell his travel companions about his adventures in the Congo. He talks about the ‘evils’ he expeirences while there and how he worked to transport ivory down river….he was more or less a mercenary. Continue reading “Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad” →