And Now For Something Completely Different

Earlier this year I wrote a brief homage to Mr. Charles Dickens on the 200^th anniversary of his birth and indicated that some of his works were on my shelf, waiting patiently to be read.  One of those patient books, which has been sitting on my book shelf for more years that I can recall, is Nicholas Nickleby. 

There’s a couple of reasons I’m reading this now.  First, I realized recently that this is the 8^th month of the year.  Ergo there’s only 4 months left for me to finish up my very long reading list and one of those months (November) will be so dominated by writing that it will have to be occupied by a very short read so I’d better knock out the longer ones now while I have time.  Secondly, my dear friend recently asked his readers to vote on the most despicable antagonists in fiction and who else should top that list but two of Dickens’ characters.  (Granted, those characters are both from Bleak House.  But I don’t have a copy of that sitting on my shelf, I have a copy of Nickleby so he gets read first.)

It’s been a long while since I dove into Dickens’ world of poor houses, law offices and evil school masters and it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly I remember his trademark style and fall in love with these characters.  I’m looking forward to it.