Book #10
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
It took me most of February to finish this book. It's never taken me so long to read 442 pages. Rather embarassing, really...
I love the movies based on this book. Love 'em to death.
The book? Not so much.
The "omniescent" narrative in Oliver Twist feels, well, pandering and kind of patronizing. It got rather frustrating how every 10 darn pages the narrator would remind me what an innocent little whelp poor Oliver was, or how sinisterly evil he thought Fagin (“the Jew”) was. Please, Mr. Dickens, just tell me the story
He’s much, much better with first person POV, in my opinion. Although “A Christmas Carol” was rather good.
And it dragged on soooooooo long… What I now can appreciate about the movies is that they cut out all the excess baloney which really had nothing to do with the title protagonist. It was painfully slow reading until Dodger came into the picture. And then it was on-and-off slowness for the rest of the book. Mostly slow. Great Expectations was, what, 600+ pages, yet it didn’t feel nearly as long as this did.
Good points: I love Fagin and the Artful Dodger. Always have.
The Mr. Bumble subplot was funny, even ironic.
Harry Maylie and Rose were, um, adorable.
Everything else (mostly, save Bill and Nancy, etc.) was dispensable.
It must sound like I really disliked this book, but that’s not the case. It’s more like annoyance. And it took up so much of my darn time.
I think I’ll stay away from the classics for a bit. Read some lighter fare.
Now reading: Carry On Jeeves, Penny Arcade 1: Attack of the Bacon Robots, and Much Ado About Nothing (for school)
It took me most of February to finish this book. It's never taken me so long to read 442 pages. Rather embarassing, really...
I love the movies based on this book. Love 'em to death.
The book? Not so much.
The "omniescent" narrative in Oliver Twist feels, well, pandering and kind of patronizing. It got rather frustrating how every 10 darn pages the narrator would remind me what an innocent little whelp poor Oliver was, or how sinisterly evil he thought Fagin (“the Jew”) was. Please, Mr. Dickens, just tell me the story
He’s much, much better with first person POV, in my opinion. Although “A Christmas Carol” was rather good.
And it dragged on soooooooo long… What I now can appreciate about the movies is that they cut out all the excess baloney which really had nothing to do with the title protagonist. It was painfully slow reading until Dodger came into the picture. And then it was on-and-off slowness for the rest of the book. Mostly slow. Great Expectations was, what, 600+ pages, yet it didn’t feel nearly as long as this did.
Good points: I love Fagin and the Artful Dodger. Always have.
The Mr. Bumble subplot was funny, even ironic.
Harry Maylie and Rose were, um, adorable.
Everything else (mostly, save Bill and Nancy, etc.) was dispensable.
It must sound like I really disliked this book, but that’s not the case. It’s more like annoyance. And it took up so much of my darn time.
I think I’ll stay away from the classics for a bit. Read some lighter fare.
Now reading: Carry On Jeeves, Penny Arcade 1: Attack of the Bacon Robots, and Much Ado About Nothing (for school)