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.