Your Daily Penguin: Charles Dickens!

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[@lilliannieswender266]

What a wonderful collection of Dickens, my favorite author! I can't tell you how many hours I've spent, both good and bad with these novels. They help me enter worlds that help me forget the actual one I exist in. I am proud to say that over my lifetime I have read all of his novels, and have begun to reread them all over again. Hugs and kisses for Miss Frieda.

[@saintdonoghue]

Incredible! See, it's just this kind of devotion that I was talking about in the video!

[@barbaratarbell606]

The Tale of Two Cities! ❤❤❤

[@pennygraham3767]

And the Pickwick Papers. My favourite for always. I’m a little stuck for words and you feel this way.

[@OldBluesChapterandVerse]

My wife Kelly adores The Pickwick Papers, too. It’s one of her favorite novels of all-time.

[@czgibson3086]

I'm not a big fan of Dickens but A Tale of Two Cities impressed me far more than anything else I've read by him. It also contains a great quote that I like to use from time to time: "I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration!"

[@TheLondonLass]

I adore Dickens and just love disappearing into his world. I discovered them as a teen and binge-read them. I grew up in London and I did feel that I could still recognise some of the world he was describing.

[@vilstef6988]

Animation director Chuck Jones, in his memoir Chuck Amuck talked at length of how a furnished, rented house when he was a kid had to pass the book test. The house he lived in longest between the ages of 6 and 15 had shelves and book cases in every room, and his family was there four years. All of Twain, Dickens and many other authors were read by the entire family. Chuck loved Mark Twain best and most.

[@Liam-yr4uf]

My attachment to Dickens' novels is partially to do with knowing what he represented in his lifetime. He stood up for the poor, he had a fun, playful demeanor and sense of humour that you can see entrenched in his novels during times of Victorian social austerity. Yet he's never crude or grotesque in doing so. While much of Dickens' work is about learning to lighten up a little, I think he does a good job of upholding Victorian ideals of virtue, morality, and gentility. I suppose, I find him to be a very human author and his books very human and down-to-earth.

[@kimesch9698]

I feel the same way about Dickens, but also Trollope. I keep them, too, in the hope that one day....

[@ramblingraconteur1616]

No copy of The Old Curiosity Shop?!? I remember enjoying the Children’s Illustrated Classics of a number of Dickens’ works as a child and then rejoined that party in college with various works. The secondary characters are usually what I delight in. I aspire to one shelf of Penguin Classics full of Dickens. Haha! Best, Jack

[@amandanicholls2796]

I love Dickens short stories and essays. I think those were a strength of his. The Signalman a favourite of mine and I have a great collection of essays about London that are a fascinating glimpse into the social history of his era.

[@debsteinman1506]

Maybe that next Dickens you purchase (like Oliver Twist) maybe the one that sparkles!

[@carolinefiller3745]

The only Dickens I really like is A Tale Of Two Cities, like you I don't get Garcia-Marquez and Proust

[@claudiaferreira585]

My experience with Dickens so far: I love one (Tale of two cities), I liked one other (Bleak House) and I hated the last one (Pickwick Papers). I have David Copperfield in my shelves but I 'm not liking the way this is going...

[@scallydandlingaboutthebook2711]

There is an exaggerated quality to Dickens that appeals to those of us that love him but I think it is quite understandable to not particularly like that.

[@Lu.G.]

I read _A Christmas Carol_ for the first time in 2018 and I loved it so much that I read it again in 2019. After my re-read, I decided to try a novel, so I read _Great Expectations._ I liked it, but I didn't love it. 🤷🏼‍♀️ I've got a couple more Dickens on my shelf to try, _The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist,_ but I never seem to be in the mood to reach for either of them.

[@arthurodell3281]

Hard Times was the novel where I finally “got” Dickens. I still don’t love his work, but I can appreciate him now. If I’m ever in the mood for a Victorian novel though, I’m far more likely to pick up Trollope or Wilkie Collins than Dickens.

[@joshohanlon7475]

I'm a little ashamed to say that I've never read a Dickens novel before. He's always been on my list of authors that I have to try, but every time I think I'm ready to try to break through, another author captures my attention and I try them instead. I picked up my first Austen (Pride and Prejudice) instead of A Tale of Two Cities. I feel like I might have made the correct choice.

[@davidmurphy5142]

Interesting comparison to Mencken, I think I see what you mean. Dickens hasn't really worked for the so far, but Mencken is easily one of my favorite writers. I'm not sure what explains this, maybe because it is easier to take some and leave some with a journalist and essayist than it is a novelist.

[@pattube]

I generally like Dickens, but I don't love Dickens. I agree he's overrated for the reasons you give. Although I don't think Dickens is consciously attempting to be too clever (by half?); I think he's sincere in that respect. Rather my main issue with Dickens is this. On the one hand, when done well (and I grant Dickens doesn't always do it well), few writers write sympathy and affection better than Dickens. On the other hand, Dickens often conflates or confuses affection as if affection is meant to be the highest form of love, as if affection can sufficiently substitute for, say, a self-sacrificial love or other loves. That in turn suggests a kind of immaturity or childishness in Dickens's writings. It's not a bad thing, per se, and the good side of it is it makes us long for the best of the simple and the child-like in life, as if seeing life through the eyes of a sweet child, but it does mean his best writing isn't able to rise above certain heights. In this respect, Dickens is sort of like Spielberg if Spielberg never made Schindler's List which was a legitimately mature work. Even Saving Private Ryan, which I enjoy, is like Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities where it attempts to be thematically rich and deep but there sre still parts where thr sentimentality is overwrought. And I don't know his biography very well, but based on his writings it makes me suspect Dickens even as an adult was starved for love. Just my opinion.

[@gaildoughty6799]

Sometimes I love Dickens. Sometimes he just grates on my last nerve. Certainly Bleak House is a fine novel, and The Old Curiosity Shop is just sentimental sloppiness. I still have Our Mutual Friend to try.

[@duffypratt]

Missing Barnaby Rudge, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Edwin Drood. No great loss on any of those. Speaking of Trollope, I sometimes wonder which is the worse historical novel: Rudge or La Vendee? When you say that you know people who know Dickens characters better than their own friends, my immediate reaction is: “Of course, because Dickens characters tend to be so thin, they are much easier to know.” Quite often, Dickens reduces a character to a gesture, and he does that brilliantly, but it is not a substitute for depth.

[@carolinasiqueira752]

I hated Tale of Two City, liked Hard Times and loved Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. I think Dombey and Son will be my next Dickens.

[@OldBluesChapterandVerse]

We have some Penguin Dickens you don’t have! Dickens is m’boy. What would you say to co-hosting a Victober Dickens readalong with me?

[@leafyconcern]

How can you not like Proust??

[@saintdonoghue]

I know! I've had that question put to me countless times in my life, and I just don't have an answer!

[@Starscreamlive]

I never understood the literary world's enthusiasm for Dickens either. He's better than both Poe and Stephen King, but not by leaps and bounds.

[@Tolstoy111]

He expanded the scope of the English novel by a considerable amount. And created many indelible characters/images.