The Fireside

Early Dickens Christmas story describes a Christmas dinner at the home of Uncle and Aunt George. Originally published in Bell's Life in London in 1835 under the name Scenes and Characters No. 10 Christmas Festivities. A Christmas Dinner Charles Dickens 1835 C hristmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes - of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the ...

It seems a couple months late with this, but luckily, still the same year.  This year, John Steinbeck's masterpiece classic, The Grapes of Wrath , turns 75. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize–winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into haves and have-nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes the very nature of equality and jus...

As you may well know by following this blog, I adore reading and books. Yup, the actual printed, physical book. I love my ereader and have even purchased ebooks on it, but the vast majority of my personal library is printed books.  Not only that, I've opted to get specific editions of books in my library. Most ordinary or average reader will most likely get a book to just have it - "Oh I feel like getting Narnia by CS Lewis...ah, there it is!" in the book store.  Now, I only own a few books as 'collector's items' (not to be read but to 'kept', and I do read the books I own, but I still like to take care of them as best as I can. When it comes to getting a series of books (Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire , etc..) to me, they all have to 'match'. I can't switch between hardback and paperback within a series - it just odd on the shelf to me. Also, preferably to have matching cover art. There are a number of factors th...