The Pickwick Papers (Dickens)

Earlier this year I decided I needed to read more of the work of Charles Dickens. I decided to begin with The Pickwick Papers, his first novel.

I admit it took me a while to get through it. The edition I have runs 875 pages and there are so many twists and turns and adventures I sometimes got distracted.

Still, I enjoyed it. The characters are memorable, especially Sam and Pickwick. The incidents or quite amusing. It was "lighter" that the other Dickens' works I've read. It was written earlier in his career when he was building his reputation, so he likely wanted to keep his audience's attention. There are digs against the legal system, lawyers, politics, and debtors' prison, but not with the ferocity he would attack such institutions in later books. 

I see that there's a movie version of the book. I'd be curious to see it.

I'd definitely recommend this book. 

I've now read The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Bleak House. Great Expectation, A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol. I will read more Dickens later, though I'm not sure which one to read next. Chronologically, Oliver Twist would be next, but we'll see.

For now, I'm on to The Quiet Light by Louis de Wohl. It's a novel about St. Thomas Aquinas, and I'm reading it in preparation for my Chesterton group's reading this fall of G.K. Chesterton's biography of Aquinas. I'd actually read de Wohl's book a few years ago, but the rereading will do me good. 

Pax et bonum