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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Un libro súper entretenido, desde la primera página se puede percibir el maravilloso estilo que que después sería la característica de Dickens, los personajes entrañables y las aventureras que viven son hilarantes. Lo único es que a veces la narración se estanca un poco por el número de páginas, pero eso no interfiere con el disfrute de el libro. Súper recomendado.
This book always takes me on an emotional roller coaster of first being annoyed by it's highly episodic nature and conveyor belt of mostly interchangeable secondary characters to eventual deep emotional involvement with the great central characters of Mr. Pickwick and Samuel Weller to the point that the book ends and I'm wiping tears from my eyes. You get the sense that Dickens is teaching himself how to write a novel through the process of writing the Pickwick papers. And although the narrative is rickety at points it's filled with comics set pieces throughout that will make you laugh out loud.
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
First and foremost, Im never sure how to rate the books I read lol. I end up living every book by the end
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
My ever-shifting relationship with Dickens is such that I tend to enjoy or dislike his work depending on what period of my life I happen to be reading it. As a teenger, I loved him. In my twenties, I found him too cartoonish. In my thirties, I’m starting to move from ambivalence to acceptance.
The Pickwick Papers is easily the funniest Dickens I’ve read, with some sections making me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, as with almost everything I’ve read by Dickens, it was about 100 pages too long with unnecessary digressions. While I enjoyed returning to the episodic, comic narrative over a period of a couple months (which seems like the best way to read Dickens, since reading it all at once would be like devouring an entire box of sugar cookies in one sitting), I found myself growing weary of characters popping in to tell random, chapter-long stories. It was obviously meant to be filler for Dickens to fulfill his duties of a certain word count or number of sketches per serial. I also grew bored of the static nature of the main characters, except, ironically, for Pickwick, who actually seems to shift personalities rather than to develop in a traditional sense. (I feel much the same when watching sitcoms: eight seasons of the same characters with the same quirks and the same running jokes? Gah!)
Even so, we have countless memorable characters and moments. We also have the typical Dickens ending where everything is tied up into a neat bow (always a little too neat). Dickens even gives us a tongue-in-cheek nod to this with the final chapter title: "...Everything Concluded to the Satisfaction of Everybody." For me, such satisfying ends can be tiresome and, again ironically, not so satisfying.
I still can’t say I love Dickens, but this made for an enjoyable read, and I’ll probably try [b:Nicholas Nickleby|325085|Nicholas Nickleby|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352758388s/325085.jpg|4993095] sometime later this year.
The Pickwick Papers is easily the funniest Dickens I’ve read, with some sections making me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, as with almost everything I’ve read by Dickens, it was about 100 pages too long with unnecessary digressions. While I enjoyed returning to the episodic, comic narrative over a period of a couple months (which seems like the best way to read Dickens, since reading it all at once would be like devouring an entire box of sugar cookies in one sitting), I found myself growing weary of characters popping in to tell random, chapter-long stories. It was obviously meant to be filler for Dickens to fulfill his duties of a certain word count or number of sketches per serial. I also grew bored of the static nature of the main characters, except, ironically, for Pickwick, who actually seems to shift personalities rather than to develop in a traditional sense. (I feel much the same when watching sitcoms: eight seasons of the same characters with the same quirks and the same running jokes? Gah!)
Even so, we have countless memorable characters and moments. We also have the typical Dickens ending where everything is tied up into a neat bow (always a little too neat). Dickens even gives us a tongue-in-cheek nod to this with the final chapter title: "...Everything Concluded to the Satisfaction of Everybody." For me, such satisfying ends can be tiresome and, again ironically, not so satisfying.
I still can’t say I love Dickens, but this made for an enjoyable read, and I’ll probably try [b:Nicholas Nickleby|325085|Nicholas Nickleby|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352758388s/325085.jpg|4993095] sometime later this year.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Published serially 1836-37.
This is a bucket-list book for me that fills a longstanding hole in my education. I decided to read it a little like a reader might have encountered it in the 1830s—by the numbers, though I did not make myself wait a month to read each number. But pausing where Dickens’s original audience had to pause gave me a better idea of structure, such as it is, than I might have otherwise had. It is notoriously loosely planned—its young author inventing its form as he went along. It began as something like a graphic novel, captions for a series of pictures that told a story. But when the illustrator committed suicide, Dickens and his publishers reached a deal to increase the size of the installments and decrease the number of illustrations. The success of the 32-page number with two pictures set a pattern in publishing for years to come. Pickwick Papers never becomes a novel exactly, but it is prose fiction, and once it got rolling, it really caught on with its audience. It started out as a travel book, but it morphed into something like a picaresque sitcom. It gave Dickens a chance to practice the skills he would use his entire career—establishing a memorable character in a phrase or two, skewering the cruelties and absurdity of the law and the court system, and creating suspense, sentimentality and humor with equal facility, often in the same few pages. Characters stand out: Sam Weller with his “as the man said when” jokes; Mr. Pickwick with his middleclass kindness, stubbornness and occasional foolishness; and even, at the end, a couple of stock brokers wagering on whether a man whose investments look iffy will commit suicide in the next few days. They all stick in the mind. Pickwick changed the publishing industry. Dickens’s publishers found a way to publish and market the book that was perfectly suited to Dickens and the new mass audience he would build. This one is off my bucket list. If you haven’t read it, it should be on yours.
This is a bucket-list book for me that fills a longstanding hole in my education. I decided to read it a little like a reader might have encountered it in the 1830s—by the numbers, though I did not make myself wait a month to read each number. But pausing where Dickens’s original audience had to pause gave me a better idea of structure, such as it is, than I might have otherwise had. It is notoriously loosely planned—its young author inventing its form as he went along. It began as something like a graphic novel, captions for a series of pictures that told a story. But when the illustrator committed suicide, Dickens and his publishers reached a deal to increase the size of the installments and decrease the number of illustrations. The success of the 32-page number with two pictures set a pattern in publishing for years to come. Pickwick Papers never becomes a novel exactly, but it is prose fiction, and once it got rolling, it really caught on with its audience. It started out as a travel book, but it morphed into something like a picaresque sitcom. It gave Dickens a chance to practice the skills he would use his entire career—establishing a memorable character in a phrase or two, skewering the cruelties and absurdity of the law and the court system, and creating suspense, sentimentality and humor with equal facility, often in the same few pages. Characters stand out: Sam Weller with his “as the man said when” jokes; Mr. Pickwick with his middleclass kindness, stubbornness and occasional foolishness; and even, at the end, a couple of stock brokers wagering on whether a man whose investments look iffy will commit suicide in the next few days. They all stick in the mind. Pickwick changed the publishing industry. Dickens’s publishers found a way to publish and market the book that was perfectly suited to Dickens and the new mass audience he would build. This one is off my bucket list. If you haven’t read it, it should be on yours.
“Such,' thought Mr. Pickwick, 'are the narrow views of those philosophers who, content with examining the things that lie before them, look not to the truths which are hidden beyond.” - Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Mr. Pickwick, Founder and Chairman of The Pickwick Club, a club formed to explore places remote from London and investigate the quaint and curious phenomena of life found there. The (mis)adventures and stories that come from himself and other members of the club are harrowing, funny, and occasionally tragic. Pickwick gets embroiled in a lawsuit, finds himself in a debtor's prison, helps his friends as he is able, and generally works towards what he sees as the best outcome for those involved.
Originally serialized over 20 months, The Pickwick Papers is a lot. Unless you are used to Dickens's writing style, which I am not yet. I have yet to be sucked into Dickens's narration. Perhaps it is because it feels like the narrator is interjecting instead of telling the story, and there is no concise method of telling a story this way. I enjoy Dickens, in small doses. Which, it appears, is how he was delivered to his original audience. I'll continue to read more Dickens, and I hope that I get used to the serialization style and Dickens's style, too.
Mr. Pickwick, Founder and Chairman of The Pickwick Club, a club formed to explore places remote from London and investigate the quaint and curious phenomena of life found there. The (mis)adventures and stories that come from himself and other members of the club are harrowing, funny, and occasionally tragic. Pickwick gets embroiled in a lawsuit, finds himself in a debtor's prison, helps his friends as he is able, and generally works towards what he sees as the best outcome for those involved.
Originally serialized over 20 months, The Pickwick Papers is a lot. Unless you are used to Dickens's writing style, which I am not yet. I have yet to be sucked into Dickens's narration. Perhaps it is because it feels like the narrator is interjecting instead of telling the story, and there is no concise method of telling a story this way. I enjoy Dickens, in small doses. Which, it appears, is how he was delivered to his original audience. I'll continue to read more Dickens, and I hope that I get used to the serialization style and Dickens's style, too.
What an absolute joy to read! I'm slowly making my way through Dicken's major novels and this is my favorite so far. I now understand why this book made him so famous and successful. It's a very impressive first work.
You can definitely see in this book certain themes he'd end up covering in his later works. The chapters dealing with the courts recall Bleak House, the ghost stories recall A Christmas Carol, the coincidences and repeating minor characters recall....all his works!
I enjoyed the meandering non-plot of the book. At the beginning, I was strongly reminded of Canterbury Tales. Wonder if that was an inspiration for him? The stories within stories were great fun. Towards the second half, it turned into a more conventional storyline but that's ok. It was still a pleasure to read.
I was surprised at how funny I found this book to be. Humor tends to not age well and this book was written 182 years ago. The humor in it, though, is still fresh and amusing. It's not often I laugh out loud while reading but in this instance I did. Not that the book is like a stand up comedian; it's not a laugh a minute but there are occasional zingers that really stand out.
I also enjoyed learning random facts and words while reading this novel. My new-ish reading goal is to look up anything I don't understand in a book I am reading. I mean, I've got a handheld computer in my pocket with all the information in the world available at my fingertips - I might as well take advantage of it. The downside of googling words was that sometimes they have a different meaning than what they used to. I searched for a picture of a buff jerkin - I knew it was an article of clothing but wasn't sure what it looked like. The first few results were indeed images of a tan, long vest men wore. Unfortunately the majority of the subsequent images were of a buff (naked muscled guy) "jerking". Oh my. Haha. Not the vibe I was into at the moment.
It's not that this book is difficult to read with a bunch of highfalutin vocabulary. Rather, since it was written almost 200 years ago, there are words and people that I'm not familiar with - the audience at the time would have known immediately all the references. Here are some of my favorite bits of random knowledge I learned from Professor Google.
Heeltap - the dregs of a wine glass
Alexander Selkirk - a Scottish navy man who was castaway on a South Pacific island for 4 years and the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe
cheval de frise - a defensive obstacle consisting of a portable frame covered with projecting long iron or wooden spikes
bagman - a traveling salesman
pettifogging - quibbling over something petty
calomel - a white tasteless powder used as a purgative
negus - a hot drink made of port, sugar, lemon & spices
George Barnwell - a character in the 1731 play The London Merchant, one of the most popular 18th century plays that used middle class & working class characters as the leads instead of the usual upper class
So not only was this novel entertaining and humorous, but I learned a bunch of random factoids! It's a win-win.
You can definitely see in this book certain themes he'd end up covering in his later works. The chapters dealing with the courts recall Bleak House, the ghost stories recall A Christmas Carol, the coincidences and repeating minor characters recall....all his works!
I enjoyed the meandering non-plot of the book. At the beginning, I was strongly reminded of Canterbury Tales. Wonder if that was an inspiration for him? The stories within stories were great fun. Towards the second half, it turned into a more conventional storyline but that's ok. It was still a pleasure to read.
I was surprised at how funny I found this book to be. Humor tends to not age well and this book was written 182 years ago. The humor in it, though, is still fresh and amusing. It's not often I laugh out loud while reading but in this instance I did. Not that the book is like a stand up comedian; it's not a laugh a minute but there are occasional zingers that really stand out.
I also enjoyed learning random facts and words while reading this novel. My new-ish reading goal is to look up anything I don't understand in a book I am reading. I mean, I've got a handheld computer in my pocket with all the information in the world available at my fingertips - I might as well take advantage of it. The downside of googling words was that sometimes they have a different meaning than what they used to. I searched for a picture of a buff jerkin - I knew it was an article of clothing but wasn't sure what it looked like. The first few results were indeed images of a tan, long vest men wore. Unfortunately the majority of the subsequent images were of a buff (naked muscled guy) "jerking". Oh my. Haha. Not the vibe I was into at the moment.
It's not that this book is difficult to read with a bunch of highfalutin vocabulary. Rather, since it was written almost 200 years ago, there are words and people that I'm not familiar with - the audience at the time would have known immediately all the references. Here are some of my favorite bits of random knowledge I learned from Professor Google.
Heeltap - the dregs of a wine glass
Alexander Selkirk - a Scottish navy man who was castaway on a South Pacific island for 4 years and the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe
cheval de frise - a defensive obstacle consisting of a portable frame covered with projecting long iron or wooden spikes
bagman - a traveling salesman
pettifogging - quibbling over something petty
calomel - a white tasteless powder used as a purgative
negus - a hot drink made of port, sugar, lemon & spices
George Barnwell - a character in the 1731 play The London Merchant, one of the most popular 18th century plays that used middle class & working class characters as the leads instead of the usual upper class
So not only was this novel entertaining and humorous, but I learned a bunch of random factoids! It's a win-win.