Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
take a shot every time mr. bounderby says “i am josiah bounderby of coketown”
what an insufferable character.
what an insufferable character.
I should no longer be surprised that the classics are still so relevant - after all, that's what I try to show my students every day. Hard Times, however, was surprisingly relevant to the education profession in this age of struggle over whether art, languages, music, and other topics are still worthy of study, or whether we ought to merely prepare students narrowly for the professions we somehow divine for them. This is exactly the conflict at the center of this novel, and Dickens certainly has an opinion. I agree with him that education is more than merely churning out workers for factories and corporations. Education enriches a person's life, and helps people to understand a purpose in life beyond helping some boss make a lot of money. I recommend this book for anyone who doubts this about education.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Dickens delivers another winner in this book, which is uncharacteristically concise. At fewer than 300 pages, this book is downright short, by Dickens' standards.
With a title like Hard Times, and with my familiarity of Dickens' other literature (I would never accuse Mr. Dickens of his levity throughout his fictions, I had apprehensions about the dark shenanigans that would be going down in this book. While my favorite book of Dickens' remains Bleak House, this was another delight-delightful with a feeling of dread.
Dickens is as masterful as ever with this book, the characters so well intertwined and the setting so vividly illustrated, that this is difficult to put down. While I would have preferred the usual, verbose Dickens-with the rich detail, and the fuller context of characters' backstories; this was still fantastic, well-written and entertaining.
I recommend this book to all fans of Dickens, the English language or great literature in general. You can't consider yourself well-read until you've familiar with the breadth of Charles Dickens' literature. I'm only sad that the list of books by Dickens that I HAVEN'T read is quickly dwindling.
With a title like Hard Times, and with my familiarity of Dickens' other literature (I would never accuse Mr. Dickens of his levity throughout his fictions, I had apprehensions about the dark shenanigans that would be going down in this book. While my favorite book of Dickens' remains Bleak House, this was another delight-delightful with a feeling of dread.
Dickens is as masterful as ever with this book, the characters so well intertwined and the setting so vividly illustrated, that this is difficult to put down. While I would have preferred the usual, verbose Dickens-with the rich detail, and the fuller context of characters' backstories; this was still fantastic, well-written and entertaining.
I recommend this book to all fans of Dickens, the English language or great literature in general. You can't consider yourself well-read until you've familiar with the breadth of Charles Dickens' literature. I'm only sad that the list of books by Dickens that I HAVEN'T read is quickly dwindling.
What can we say? Dickens lived in a different time. We really seem to grab a bingo of uncormfortably out of date occurances here. We've got creepy fifty-year old men watching their best friend's daughter grow up, lusting after her and waiting just long enough for it to be deemed 'decent' before springing his proposal. Said little girl has a weird, bordline incestuous obsession with her brother. We've got heapings of upper class privelege. We've got outright mocking of horse-riders; which I'm pretty sure means travellers? And we've got, best of all, actual blackface at one point.
Now maybe these things shouldn't mark down the book too harshly; as I said, completely different era it was written in. But they do make it a distinctly unpleasant experience for a modern reader; above and beyond the unpleasantness which is intended by the already vile characters of the novel. What remains is to judge it on the writing quality, and the plot. In short, still not a fan.
The narrator at least is at pains to point out how awful all these characters are, and how much better life could be for them if they were only able to communicate a bit better with each other. As it stands, the dialogue in lots of places is at odds with the other people in the conversation, every one a horrible narcissist to some degree.
One of the only honest and decent blokes in the entire novel is rewarded for his good character by first being framed for a bank robbery and then, for no reason at all, falling down a mineshaft and dying. One other character who sees the error of his ways towards the end of the novel attempts to repent and in doing so allows a confessed and conviced felon to escape- not ideal!
On the whole, a slightly tedious and meandering tale of characters whose problems they have (mostly) created for themselves.
I'm told that this is an excellent satire, but the society it satirises has been dead for over a century. Possibly I've missed a central point to this novel, but as it stands it just wasn't a great deal of fun to read.
Now maybe these things shouldn't mark down the book too harshly; as I said, completely different era it was written in. But they do make it a distinctly unpleasant experience for a modern reader; above and beyond the unpleasantness which is intended by the already vile characters of the novel. What remains is to judge it on the writing quality, and the plot. In short, still not a fan.
The narrator at least is at pains to point out how awful all these characters are, and how much better life could be for them if they were only able to communicate a bit better with each other. As it stands, the dialogue in lots of places is at odds with the other people in the conversation, every one a horrible narcissist to some degree.
One of the only honest and decent blokes in the entire novel is rewarded for his good character by first being framed for a bank robbery and then, for no reason at all, falling down a mineshaft and dying. One other character who sees the error of his ways towards the end of the novel attempts to repent and in doing so allows a confessed and conviced felon to escape- not ideal!
On the whole, a slightly tedious and meandering tale of characters whose problems they have (mostly) created for themselves.
I'm told that this is an excellent satire, but the society it satirises has been dead for over a century. Possibly I've missed a central point to this novel, but as it stands it just wasn't a great deal of fun to read.
If you handed me this book without telling me that author I would probably not have guessed it was Dickens. The intro to my edition explains that Dickens had planned to take a year off from novel writing after finishing Bleak House. The other men with a stake in his magazine begged him to write a serialized novel in it to boost sales. He did and Hard Times is the result.
It feels like he started this feeling that he had given in but wasn't going to try very hard. I can see him thinking, well, I'll just make this short and you're not getting a big cast of characters and I really wanted to write an essay denouncing Utilitarianism so I'll just make this about that. Then he gets going and about halfway through starts having fun with it. I started having more fun too and surprised myself be ending up liking it. It's no Bleak House, but it was enjoyable and I liked it better than Little Dorritt, The Old Curiosity Shop and even Our Mutual Friend.
It feels like he started this feeling that he had given in but wasn't going to try very hard. I can see him thinking, well, I'll just make this short and you're not getting a big cast of characters and I really wanted to write an essay denouncing Utilitarianism so I'll just make this about that. Then he gets going and about halfway through starts having fun with it. I started having more fun too and surprised myself be ending up liking it. It's no Bleak House, but it was enjoyable and I liked it better than Little Dorritt, The Old Curiosity Shop and even Our Mutual Friend.
The opening scenes in the school are the best. The Stephen-Rachael storyline seemed extraneous.
Mrs. Sparsit as a harpy: the harpies swoop down and steal food - Mrs. Sparsit "fell" socially, moves quickly down stairs, compared often to a bird, in almost all her scenes she's eating. Her mother's family is the Powlers, a form of "poller": a plunderer. Her father's family is the Scadgers, which is slang for a "mean, contemptible person, one who always wants a loan".
Dickens ranking!
1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. A Christmas Carol
3. Oliver Twist
4. Hard Times
Quotes:
- "Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse."
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
"Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."
- Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
- She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way of all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
- As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomers within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind in *his* Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little piece of sponge.
- It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
Mrs. Sparsit as a harpy: the harpies swoop down and steal food - Mrs. Sparsit "fell" socially, moves quickly down stairs, compared often to a bird, in almost all her scenes she's eating. Her mother's family is the Powlers, a form of "poller": a plunderer. Her father's family is the Scadgers, which is slang for a "mean, contemptible person, one who always wants a loan".
Dickens ranking!
1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. A Christmas Carol
3. Oliver Twist
4. Hard Times
Quotes:
- "Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse."
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
"Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."
- Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
- She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way of all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
- As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomers within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind in *his* Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little piece of sponge.
- It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
Been neglecting reading Charles Dickens for a while, but I was looking to read a classic and I found this. Charles Dickens had an unique and Interesting way writing about people and their life that ice rarely seen someone else do and this was no exception. I enjoyed the commentary of the characters in this book and the hard times they go through.