@Col-Klink, Nicholas Nickleby is my list of Dickens books to read. What else is in your top six of Dickens?

@SilverLily, sounds like a plan! It's lovely having friends who will let you borrow books (theirs or their library's) while you're visiting. Hope you enjoy what you get a chance to read!

@valiantarcher Well, the top three (by order of publication because ranking is hard for me) are Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol in Prose and Great Expectations. The three I rank slightly below are (again, in order of publication) Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge and David Copperfield. 

I'm reading Little Women for the first time in years, and keep discovering lots of delightful details. Who knows that Mr March used to be well-off, but lost his property when he tried to help someone (sounds like he stood guarantor for a business loan), and that Meg is the only one old enough to remember being rich and having lovely things? Who remembers that old Mr Laurence was a friend of Mrs March (Marmee), or that his son married an Italian musician (and they both died young)? 
I hope that's enough to whet your appetite to read it yourself, instead of just watching the various movies.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, good for you on tackling a few more books to try to get them off your shelf! And it wasn't exactly my intention to dissuade anyone from reading The Count of Monte Cristo, but I suppose I did find it unsatisfying in the end.

Oh, I would still like to read it some point, but I realized by moving it way down on my list that I have a number of books that have been on my list for years and that I am no closer to reading them than I was a few years ago.  

One of these days I should read Dickens, I haven't read any since graduating from school and I only read what was required in school. His writing didn't interest me at the time, but I'm kind of curious now.  

Oh, I haven't read Little Women in ages, that another book I should read again. So many books, so little time.  

Ugh, have all the newer Christian fiction books gotten to be the same? I started another one that was released last year and all of the women in the series are "brilliant" women and they know it, but they are all terrible at doing anything feminine (homemaking, cooking, sewing, caring for children, etc.). The book is set in 1872. I will not be looking for the other books in series, I can imagine their plots from reading this book. Probably should have just tossed the book after reading the first few chapters, but I wasn't really thinking and I am already half-way through it...going to try to speed read the rest of the book, just so I can say I finished it when I give it a bad rating on Goodreads.

SnowAngel

@snowangel I read a Dickens in high school and university every year except one, I think. The following year I read Pickwick Papers. The first chapter or two were dry and heavy going,  but once I got into it I was glad I'd persevered. Ive read several others since. 

He's a clever and perceptive writer, and his social comments are still relevant today. Sadly.

@Col-Klink, thanks! I've read the latter two in your top three Dickens and enjoyed them, though it's been quite a while since I read Great Expectations.

@coracle, I've actually read both Little Women and Good Wives but never watched an adaptation that I can recall. That said, I never really took to the book(s), though I also read and remember enjoying Little Men more.

@SnowAngel, ah, I see! And I sympathise with the books on the to-read list that have been there for years and are no closer to being read. Hmm. What are the 'brilliant' women brilliant in then? It seems very odd that they wouldn't have any skills in any tasks that might've still been considered necessities, at least for many women.

Posted by: @coracle

@snowangel I read a Dickens in high school and university every year except one, I think. The following year I read Pickwick Papers. The first chapter or two were dry and heavy going,  but once I got into it I was glad I'd persevered. Ive read several others since. 

He's a clever and perceptive writer, and his social comments are still relevant today. Sadly.

 I've only ever read bits and pieces of Dickens that I can recall, I was never really interested in English Lit in school, just American Lit. Do you or any of the other Dickens fans have a recommendation for a book to start with? I haven't look to see what the local library has yet, but I'm sure whatever they don't have I can get via interlibrary loan.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, ah, I see! And I sympathise with the books on the to-read list that have been there for years and are no closer to being read. Hmm. What are the 'brilliant' women brilliant in then? It seems very odd that they wouldn't have any skills in any tasks that might've still been considered necessities, at least for many women.

The book was terrible. That might have ended my association with any future Bethany House fiction for good. The three main women in the series were a chemical engineer, an inventor, and a builder, they did not fit the time period of the story at all. The main character for the book I read was the inventor, at one point in the story she saw a little girl playing rocks and "wondered if the little girl would like to go to engineering school to develop her construction skills". The author should have made it a western fantasy. I just cleared my shelves of four other Bethany House books that were published in the last few years, the books are not by my favorite authors and they were cheap at the thrift shop...so I am not going to waste my time on them. I am going to work on those books that I have been meaning to read for age instead.

Little sis got Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers from the library for me this week, so I am moving on from that absolutely awful fiction. It's nice to pick up a book and know it will be worth reading.  

SnowAngel

Posted by: @snowangel

. Do you or any of the other Dickens fans have a recommendation for a book to start with?

Well, I guess that depends on what kind of books you like. I'm a big fan of Nicholas Nickleby but I should warn you it has a slow start. I don't remember how patient you are with super long books. Sorry if you've mentioned it on this thread and I forgot. 

Nicholas Nickleby is also one of those books where the good characters are totally good and the bad characters are totally bad which for me is part of what makes it so much fun, but not everyone likes books like that. Great Expectations is a bit more morally complex, if that's your thing, and IMO it might be the overall best written of Dickens's books. But I also know people who read it and really didn't like it. (I also know people, like me, who read it and did like it. So kind of a you-love-it-or-you-hate-it book.)

Both Oliver Twist and David Copperfield have really engaging beginnings so they might be the easiest for the casual reader to get into. I wouldn't say either is quite as great as Nicholas Nickleby or Great Expectations on the whole, but David Copperfield just might have the greatest cast of characters in any Dickens book. (Betsey Trotwood is awesome.) 

@col-klink, I do enjoy long books, although sometimes I will wait ages to read them if I think it will take me several weeks to read them. The local library does have Nicholas Nickleby, I'll try to get later this week if my schedule works out. I forgot one of sisters read it last year, and she did like it even though it was long. The library also has Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, I think they are all unbridged, it's hard to tell with the library catalog since all the Dickens books are in the children's section for some reason. 

I finished Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers yesterday, I should have read it sooner and I should have asked my sister to get Clouds of Witness as well. I always feel like such an idiot when I finally read a book or author that has been recommended to me by multiple people multiple times and lo, and behold they were right. I enjoyed reading Whose Body? very much. Nothing to do with the plot, but I was surprised when the Dowager Duchess was describing the game Pit, although it's not mentioned by name, as I had no idea the game was that old.    

SnowAngel

Hooray, I went to the library yesterday and got Nicholas Nickleby, Clouds of Witness, and a couple more books my little sis thinks I need to read. It almost didn't work out to go this week, so I am thrilled it did and now I have my weekend reading.  I started Clouds of Witness this morning.

SnowAngel

@SnowAngel, in addition to Col Klink's thoughts, I have two thoughts on places to start with Dickens:
The Christmas Carol is shorter and a familiar plot, so it might not be a bad book to dip your toes in with.
My first Dickens was Great Expectations and I zipped through it, but I read it for school. Bleak House and Little Dorrit were two I read for fun and really enjoyed, so maybe one of those? The other thing, though, is that with Little Dorrit, I actually read it alongside watching an adaptation, which helped me visualise the characters and get into the book a bit faster than I might've otherwise.

Oof. Soooo, female engineers and inventors have been around longer than one might expect (and, hey, there were women building in Nehemiah's time ) but I entirely believe that they were represented in fiction as far more modern than they would've been. Which is something I hate seeing in modern fiction (throughout history, women have done way more things than we tend to give them credit for in modern times, but they were often done within the normal societal bounds and, sometimes, unofficially; I'm trying to think through all the stories I've heard, and in a lot of instances, women learned from or practiced with fathers, brothers, or husbands), and so I too would've probably tossed the books disgruntedly.

I'm glad you enjoyed Whose Body?! It wasn't the first Sayers novel I read, but it was the first one that really caught me (I should reread, it's been years). I hope you enjoy Clouds of Witness too!

Posted by: @snowangel

I finished Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers yesterday, I should have read it sooner and I should have asked my sister to get Clouds of Witness as well.

Popping in to say that recently, while busy working in our kitchen, I listened to the BBC radio dramas of both these Lord Peter Wimsey tales, along with Unnatural Death. What an utterly memorable character Wimsey is! In these BBC versions, Ian Carmichael portrays this "aristocratic amateur sleuth" beautifully.

I have just begun The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. Truly interesting thus far (I am about 1/3 of the way through).

Oof. Soooo, female engineers and inventors have been around longer than one might expect (and, hey, there were women building in Nehemiah's time ) but I entirely believe that they were represented in fiction as far more modern than they would've been. Which is something I hate seeing in modern fiction (throughout history, women have done way more things than we tend to give them credit for in modern times, but they were often done within the normal societal bounds and, sometimes, unofficially; I'm trying to think through all the stories I've heard, and in a lot of instances, women learned from or practiced with fathers, brothers, or husbands), and so I too would've probably tossed the books disgruntedly.

I think that, historically, the contributions of women just weren't mentioned. I watched a documentary about the history of Edwards Air Force base and there were a dozen gals employed on the base in the 1950s whose job it was to analyze test measurements from the rocket powered aircraft that were in development and plot them on graphs, by pencil and paper, as there were no computers around back them, in mind-boggling equations. No mention of them anywhere in any history of the space program I read. They lived on the base too when conditions were quite primitive. I don't remember if they were in the military or not. Same for the women of "Hidden Figures."

That said, many modern historical fictional novels have too modern an idea about womens' roles back then, as the original poster said. And also said, the fathers, brothers, and husbands mostly picked up their skills from male relatives also, unless they broke from family tradition and learned something else.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, in addition to Col Klink's thoughts, I have two thoughts on places to start with Dickens:
The Christmas Carol is shorter and a familiar plot, so it might not be a bad book to dip your toes in with.
My first Dickens was Great Expectations and I zipped through it, but I read it for school. Bleak House and Little Dorrit were two I read for fun and really enjoyed, so maybe one of those? The other thing, though, is that with Little Dorrit, I actually read it alongside watching an adaptation, which helped me visualise the characters and get into the book a bit faster than I might've otherwise.

I'm 8 pages into Nicholas Nickleby, we'll see how far I get. I saw both Bleak House and Little Dorrit in the children's classics section at the library, I didn't see A Christmas Carol so it must be in a different section.  I'll keep them in mind. As a matter a fact I'm going to put a sticky note in my wallet right now so I don't forget. This library doesn't have any Dickens films and they won't interlibrary loan dvds. Although I have seen the Little Dorrit  2008 miniseries, but that was a few years ago, I did find it interesting.

I'm glad you enjoyed Whose Body?! It wasn't the first Sayers novel I read, but it was the first one that really caught me (I should reread, it's been years). I hope you enjoy Clouds of Witness too!

I really enjoyed Clouds of Witness. On Sunday afternoon when I wasn't playing a board game with the siblings, my nose was in the book.   I'm looking forward to reading Unnatural Death soon.

Posted by: @jo

Posted by: @snowangel

I finished Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers yesterday, I should have read it sooner and I should have asked my sister to get Clouds of Witness as well.

Popping in to say that recently, while busy working in our kitchen, I listened to the BBC radio dramas of both these Lord Peter Wimsey tales, along with Unnatural Death. What an utterly memorable character Wimsey is! In these BBC versions, Ian Carmichael portrays this "aristocratic amateur sleuth" beautifully.

 Oh, neat, I love radio dramas.  

Okay, so I opened a bit of a can of worms with my comments about the historical fiction book I read...I know women have done and can do many jobs that are normally done by men and have done so throughout the years. My problem with the characters was that not one but all three sisters were well outside the societal norms for the era, knew they were brilliant and kept telling everyone that they were super smart, and didn't have any basic life skills or the inclination to learn them. What good was all their brilliance? If they didn't have others caring for their every day needs, the characters would have been in a world of hurt. All three were skilled mathematicians, but unable to apply any of their knowledge to the art of cooking. Even if the heroines didn't enjoy baking, they should have been able to prepare a few simple meals. I thought at least the chemical engineer should have been able to apply some of her knowledge in the kitchen. A further example is that the inventor sister thought that stew made from potatoes, carrots, and beef jerky would cook in the same amount of time as a pan of biscuits (10 minutes of baking time). On second thought, maybe it was just miscategorized - it's a great Western comedy.

I personally enjoy reading about the Reformers' wives during the Protestant Reformation. There isn't a lot about them, but what I have read is fascinating.  And now what I really want to read about is the Puritans because I recently did some family genealogy during which I found some of the American Puritans in my family tree.  

SnowAngel

I have been reading All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis: 1922 - 1927. I believe Lewis wrote this diary before he became a Christian.  I am not sure if he wanted his diary to be published, but since it has been made public by Mr. Walter Hooper and the Lewis estate I don’t think there is any harm in me reading it. It is really interesting, although Lewis’ writing is not as polished as in his other books. It is very informal and direct writing.  If you want to know something about Lewis’ personal life the diary is well worth reading.