A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

“Bah Humbug!” has become a famous catchphrase. Scrooge has become famous as well. If you’re tight-fisted or if you’re a bit of a party pooper you’re jokingly nicknamed Scrooge. Well, where did the two famous sayings come from? Well, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol of course. One of Dickens’ most loved novels holds these two famous sayings and is as famous today as it was back then. Even though A Christmas Carol is one Dickens’ most famous works it hasn’t be read as much as his other classics. In a recent survey (on the web) out of all of ...  Read the complete review

In My 'Landmark Texts' module of my English degree course once of the books I have to read is Charles Dickens' a Christmas Carol. Now although I know this story exceptionally well I must admit that until last week I had never read the book. The story is primarily a ghost story, as it was traditional to tell such stories on the Eve of Christmas. Dickens himself views the story as a 'ghostly little book' and wishes that it might haunt the reader's houses pleasantly. The story begins with the line that is remembered by most "Marley was dead, to begin with" and then progresses to make us certain that Marley was dead. Once this point has been ...  Read the complete review

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.” “Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” as his Nephew bid him a Merry Christmas, and those two words encompass the feelings of the truly miserly and miserable Ebenezer Scrooge. A man of such unimaginable bad will that he only lets his long suffering employee Bob Cratchit use one piece of coal in the fire at a time. A man that sees Christmas day as little more than a poor excuse for picking a mans pocket every twenty-fifth of December, and warns the ...  Read the complete review

The film itself was a big hit and was put on our screens for years every christmas,but The book is such a great read and it has been years since I read it,but can remember it well.I was totally captivated from start to finish. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (commonly known as A Christmas Carol) is a novell by Charles Dickens.First published in December,1843 (The books story) On a snowy Christmas Eve, seven years to the day after the death of his business partner Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge and his poor clerk Bob Cratchit are at work in Scrooge's counting-house. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, arrives with seasonal greetings and an invitation ...  Read the complete review

Dickens is absolutely my favourite classic author. And of all his works, 'A Christmas Carol' is by far my favourite, and has been since I was old enough to read - and that's about 60 years now. I must have read this book a couple of thousand times - I just never tire of it. Many people find Dickens wordy and tedious. Possibly for two main reasons (and a whole lot more if you want to go into it deeply). The first is that most of Dickens' books were written in serial parts - so new chapters often summarised past ones. Secondly, Dickens isn't, and never has been, 'top of the bus' reading. By which I mean that if you want to read Dickens, you ...  Read the complete review