Dickens

[jenks]

I love this bit which occurs not long before:

And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

 

[Corpsey]

I had the audiobook on earlier, Anton Lesser does a great job.

Great Expectations

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. In this, perhaps Dickens' most profound and personal novel, we are invited to share in the sentimental education of Pip, the poor boy from the village forge who risks losing himself in snobbery and selfishness when he mysteriously inherits a fortune...

www.audible.co.uk

I'd forgotten how glorious a pompous arse Mr Pumblechook was

 

[Corpsey]

I love this bit which occurs not long before:

And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

As in the quote I posted, there's this powerful, sympathetic evocation of how the world appears differently depending on your emotions—probably especially vividly when you're a child.

The bit I always remember from 'Great Expectations' is when Pip is walking through the mist on the marshes, having stolen the 'wittles' and ...

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Holloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on - who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air - fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.

 

[Corpsey]

Reading through this thread and all the quotes mainly luka's posting have made me think i should be reading dickens

 

[shiels]

Remember we tried to start the book club and failed. Is it a doomed idea? I think you could run it corpsey or @jenks that’s his job isn’t it?

 

[shiels]

Dissensus book club does the classics. I would love that, not joking

 

[luka]

Reading through this thread and all the quotes mainly luka's posting have made me think i should be reading dickens

i cant even remember who magwitch is now

 

[shiels]

@jenks will you lead us?

 

[shiels]

I like reading corpsey on books even more than I like him on music

 

[jenks]

@jenks will you lead us?

Ha! We tried the book club. It wasn’t super successful. I remember really enjoying the Austerlitz read together but then they chose a truly awful book which was utterly unreadable. @IdleRich was always really good at posting in the book club.

But I do think reading Dickens is generally a good thing. I’ve read Great Expectations more times than almost any book I haven’t had to teach. I am torn between another re-read of it or a re-read of Pickwick.

 

[shiels]

Let’s do it - let’s start with great expectations. Just like you would do with your classes

 

[luka]

Let’s do it - let’s start with great expectations. Just like you would do with your classes

it will just be you and jenks and jenks will finish it in an afternoon, you'll get bogged down, feel your enthusiasm wane, get half way through after weeks of thankless, heavy slogging, and give up. that's the quintessential dickens experience.

 

[luka]

and with craner loftily sneering from the sidelines

 

[luka]

benny b will say hes going to join in then he'll get distracted and start doing something else instead, like making a new uk funky mix

 

[shiels]

I’m not joking I want you and corpsey to give me an English lit class and I will take it seriously

 

[luka]

we dont know anything about english literature. we're just earnest ignoramuses. thats why craner sneers loftily at us from the sidelines.

 

[shiels]

it will just be you and jenks and jenks will finish it in an afternoon, you'll get bogged down, feel your enthusiasm wane, get half way through after weeks of thankless, heavy slogging, and give up. that's the quintessential dickens experience.

No fuck up I will finish for my father jenks

 

[shiels]

and with craner loftily sneering from the sidelines

Love me Oliver love me!!!!!!!

 

[luka]

looking down his nose at us cos we didn't study english literature at Yorkshires prestigious Leeds University.

 

[craner]

looking down his nose at us cos we didn't study english literature at Yorkshires prestigious Leeds University.

It had the greatest Icelandic literature scholars in the country