Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Read More Novels

Hooray for January 2005, the month of Just Read More Novels (click on the icon for more information.) I don't know how many novels I'm going to read this month, but I thought I would weigh in for a few days on Novels that Have Changed My Life.

The first one that came to my mind when I thought up this theme (Hooray for themes, more on that later) was A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I first read it in high school, I believe, and we read it for a class, too, after I had read it on my own. The images affected me very deeply: the child run down by the nobleman's carriage, and the careless way the aristocrat tossed a coin to the child's father; the wine running in the street, forshadowing the blood to come; of course, the women knitting by the guillotine. It definitely changed the way I conceived of social justice and politics.

1 comment:

yellojkt said...

Thanks for joining in. Dickens sounds great. I read Tale of Two Cities in high school too, but the teacher said that since it was historical, it wasn't truly representative of his style. I read Great Expectations while in college on my own and loved it.