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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I haven't enjoyed Charles Dickens so much in the past, but I loved the Pickwick Papers! The book is episodic at first as Mr. Pickwick and his friends travel around and have various adventures, or listen to stories. However, just as I was getting tired of that style of writing Dickins brings on the Mrs Bardell plot, and gives the remainder of the book more solid form. The scene where she thinks that he is proposing to her, when he is actually explaining that he plans to hire a servant is hilarious. Her lawsuit for breach of promise allows Dickens to write about the horrors of the legal system and debtors prison, two themes he felt very strongly about. This was a very funny book, and I think I will try reading some more Dickens some day.
Memorable characters but the plot never quite materializes. (Confession time: I skimmed a few parts.)
It pains me to give a Dickens novel anything less than 4 stars, but this really was too saggy and overlong. Fantastic in parts, and Samuel Weller was a classic Dickens creation, but could’ve done with a bit of judicious editing, in my expert opinion.
Maybe it's because I had a couple of false starts before I managed to finish this book, but this was not one of my favorites in the Dickens oeuvre. It was episodic, like many of his books, but because the episodes weren't really linked by an overriding plot, it didn't pull me in the way his novels generally do. It was fairly obvious in this book that Dickens was paid by the word!...and I felt like he tried out and rejected several different ideas in the course of the book: where did the rest of the club members go after the first few chapters? But Sam and Tony Weller are unforgettable, and there are some marvelous ghost stories in here.
Early this year I read Bleak House and Little Dorritt, both great books I highly recommend. Pickwick Papers isn’t a great book, however it is very entertaining and certainly worth reading. The book isn’t plot driven, instead follows the adventures of the Pickwick Club as a devise for dozen and dozens of well told and humorous stories containing great characters. This devise reminded me of Don Quixote. Easy to see why the young Dickens became popular. Also enjoyed the foreshadowing of works recently read such as criticism of the slowness and injustice within the judicial system of Bleak House, the agony and ineffectiveness of debtors prisons appearing in Little Dorritt, and the seeds of tales similar to the Christmas Stories.
So much fun! I laughed out loud several times. Dickens humor is timeless.
My mom passed away five weeks ago, and my first book to read since her passing I needed to choose with care. The episodic shenanigans of the Pickwickians was the perfect reading material that wouldn't trigger further melancholy feelings. Really lifted my spirits.
I want to read everything he ever wrote. This isn't even his top ten probably and it's obviously genius.
My mom passed away five weeks ago, and my first book to read since her passing I needed to choose with care. The episodic shenanigans of the Pickwickians was the perfect reading material that wouldn't trigger further melancholy feelings. Really lifted my spirits.
I want to read everything he ever wrote. This isn't even his top ten probably and it's obviously genius.
I really limped through the last 25% of this one there at the end! I think Dickens is a brilliant writer, but this book definitely had that early works feel to it, it was very unstructured and meandering and mostly just a sequence of tableau and scenes rather than a story with a lot of momentum and motion to it. The colorful cast of characters was fun, I certainly enjoyed the comedic turns of phrase... but I think the one thing about this book that will stick in my mind forever is the really touching relationship between Pickwick and Sam Weller. Sam is probably the character that deserves the most attention and memory as a literary figure, I found him so charming and interesting. He has this quiet ruthlessness to him, his devotion to his boss knows no bounds and when he refused to leave Pickwick to get married at the end I was genuinely touched! I kind of think perhaps Tolkien read this book; I noticed some parallels between these Sams!
slow-paced
Along with Bleak House, my favorite Dickens. As light and airy and funny as he ever was.