Literary Classics Challenge - Friday Progress (1)

The first book I pick for Literary Classics Challenge is Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens. This book will also qualify for A Victorian Celebration, The Classic Bribe and The Classics Club Project. Right now I’m still on page 476 of 688. So far this is the least engaging work of Charles Dickens I have read (I have read before Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities). Perhaps, it’s being partly a collection of literary-journalism that makes Boz less favorable to me.

I admit it that the first quarter of this book is a little boring, that I must entertain myself by imagining London on Victorian era. Then I searched the internet to create posts on several topics related to Victorian London. These posts (the creating process) really helped me to keep maintaining my reading enthusiasm. Reaching the second half of the book, I begin to enjoy it. ‘The Tales’ part is more fictional, and despite of the shortness, I can still grab the usual Dickens’ plot and characterization I’ve been familiar with in the stories. There are two or three of the tales that I like very much, and several others made me laugh… J

So, it’s now 212 pages more to go, and I hope I can finish Boz by this weekend. This week is not my productive week in my reading life, there are a lot of things happened, mostly because my father is ill. My next two books are quite light, Black Beauty and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so I hope I can finish those two within June.