A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Another review! I am going to be having "Four Days of Book Reviews". First Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, now this, then tomorrow a new review, and the last day of December another review. Enjoy! (:


Title: A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens
Pg #: 131
Reading Span: December 25, 2013
Rating: *** (three stars)

A Christmas Carol is the classic story of an old, bitter man, who, through meetings of past, present, and future spirits, changes his life for the better - just in time for Christmas!

This is a very traditional and heartwarming tale. It was the perfect book for me to read on Christmas Day. That said, it was very easy to forget that this wasn't just another A Christmas Carol retelling. There was nothing original or gripping in the way Dickens wrote it that felt like it was special as compared to other editions. I give him credit for coming up with this wonderful story, but I was a little surprised at how average it seemed to me.

Let's talk about the characters in this story. Because I have seen various editions of this story, none of them were surprise. Scrooge is bitter, Bob Cratchit is kind and devoted, and Fred (Scrooge's nephew) is merry and caring. Everything with the characters were pretty much as expected and reflected on the various movies and plays I have seen. The one thing I did find was that the Ghost of Christmas Past was extremely hard to picture in my head. I still fail to see how he can randomly grow legs... The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, however, was written exactly how I saw him.

The writing style was noticeably archaic, as this was written long ago. Because of this, sometimes I had to read closely to pick up on the meaning of the sentence, which I had expected. The one thing I was surprised about, however, was how superfluous some of the story was. It was often bogged down by heavy descriptions which I honestly couldn't make sense of, not because it was old-fashioned, but because I could not decipher was Dickens was trying to say, to be honest. Call me simple-minded, I really don't care.

I seem to have a lot of qualms about the book when you read above, but overall, I still enjoyed it and because three stars means "liked the book", that is the rating I have given it. I would recommend this book to read if you want a classic tale for Christmastime, but I would not recommend reading it any other time of year.

Have a lovely day!