Last week, Oprah selected the 65th book for her insanely, popular book club. Since it's the holidays, I'm sure many of her viewers were expecting a novel that would embody the spirit of the season.A tome so feel good and belly-achingly heartwarming, every one of her one billion plus viewers around the world would run out and purchase gazillions of copies like so many times in the past.
Personally I think her current pick, a special-packaged edition of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and Tale of Two Cities, feels sort of like a lump of coal. And I think many of her loyal readers will also question if they've been naughty or nice.
Book length aside, Dickens' plots aren't the happiest. Who could ever forget an orphan pickpocket's iconic request for more gruel? I'm flumoxed by her choices because it's not as if Dickens didn't pen several Christmas-themed stories, including the holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol. Instead, she choose one of the two most depressing stories from the Victorian writer's catalogue and two stories that have nothing to do with the season.
Am I missing something?
Maybe there's something in these two tales featuring angry mobs, a mentally and physically abused orphan, an unfortunate spinster who sits around in an old wedding gown, and prisoners locked up because of the family they were born to. Or maybe I'm just over-analyzing this and it's just an ill-informed recommendation by a social icon who's never read anything by Charles Dickens. Me thinks it's the latter.
Fortunately, the season isn't over. You still have time to salvage your holiday reading list by curling up with Loose-Id's special collection of holiday themed romances, Not Quite Christmas! So save Dickens for another day. You won't be sorry. Each story in the collection is scorching, they embody the spirit of season and they won't bumb you out with convicts filing off a limb and threatening innocent children.
Enjoy and happy holidays!
Not Quite Christmas Collection
So, what do you think of Oprah's holiday picks? Any Not Quite Christmas book you really love so far?
Posted by Koko Brown
My Loose-Id Titles
7 comments:
great idea
Thanks:)
I gave up on Oprah and her picks a long time ago. I have to wonder if it's cultural. So many of the fiction books I see marketed for an African-American ethnicity (or whatever is the currently appropriate term) seem to have a depressing air of happy for maybe a few moments. I apologize if that seems bigoted, but I can't see any other reason for such a sustained run of depressing books.
I never thought of "Great Expectations" as depressing.
But yes, Dickens wrote a series of charming stories for Christmases. Why not pick those?
Love, love Dickens, but the great novels, of which Great Expectations is undoubtedly one, demands a lot of in-depth reading to really show its glory. Not at Christmas, I'd have thought.
Most Dickens books have happy endings. Great Expectations originally had an unhappy one, but Thackeray persuaded Dickens to change it, telling him that the happy ending had more resonance and worked better. Luckily, Dickens agreed.
I think Dickens is a wonderful choice, although I agree I would have preferred to see one of the Christmas stories as an Oprah pick -- especially since most people are unaware of how many Christmas stories Dickens actually wrote!
But I can't object to anything that introduces a contemporary audience, even briefly, to Dickens!
@Dragonbook3 No it's not bigoted and like you I haven't followed any of her recommendations. And I agree as well with your opinion of some of the African American targeted books out there.
@Lynne and Josh...I love Dickens' work as well and as a former English teacher have read all of his works several times over.
I just think Oprah had quite a few Christmas stories to choose from within his catologue besides the ones she chose.
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