Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Dickens

What the Dickens?

Many of Oprah Winfrey’s book club picks are iffy at best, but her latest choices (she’s naming two books this time) could scarcely be better. Unlike her previously named authors – some of whom have gone from obscurity to best-seller – the scribe who penned both of her new selections will have nothing to gain.

Oprah's Choice

Oprah Picks Dickens

In his day, Charles Dickens was the literary equivalent of a rock star, an Elton John without the sequins. People were caught up in his serialized stories like today’s viewers of telenovellas and raced to get the latest newspaper for the monthly installment. Who was knocked off? Who survived? It was 19th century Dancing with the Stars.

Oprah is recommending that her viewers take up A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, and while it is hard to disagree with her choices, I personally would have placed David Copperfield ahead of Cities. Dickens himself counted Copperfield as his favorite, and is largely biographical.

That being said, the novels are world’s apart from most of her offerings, which tend to feature down-trodden women pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Inspiring – at least some of them – but hardly great literature. There are so many great writers who could benefit from her hammer-wielding endorsement, while many have been wasted on tales such as Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s Icy Sparks, a one-trick pony novel that rates as many Dislikes as Likes on the Amazon chart.

Granted, I’ll likely be inundated later with unread copies of the Dickens “Oprah Edition.” His 19th century writing isn’t for everyone, but once the differences in the English languages of then and now are bridged, there are few books I recommend as highly.

Oprah is listening to me at last!

Techno-trash

No, it isn’t a new German electronic music-fusion. It is the output of the sinister new time-waster. Anyone tending a blog that offers the readers an opportunity to leave a written comment will find droppings such as this one, waiting in the electronic mailbox:

I can imagine hard do the job it has to happen to be necessary to study with this write-up. Just about all what i can tell is definitely preserve submitting these kinds of posting of course you like that.

This one is actually a little more coherent than others.

I love the names of the supposed comment-leavers, people like Dorothy Spoodlepuppy and Lorian Gagglesnacket. I’m thinking I should keep them on file and work them in to a Charles Dickens type novel.

“I can imagine hard do the job,” said Dorothy Spoodlepuppy, sighing as she tapped at the keyboard. “It has to happen to be necessary to study with this write up.”

“Right on,” answered Lorian, the cheerful son of Mrs. Gagglesnacket.

Each morning I spend a little time taking out the electronic trash. It’s the equivalent of garbage disposal. I push the delete key and – whirrwhisk! – the stuff is gone, probably reduced to microscopic electronic shavings that will one day clutter the bottom of my laptop.

I Googled (I am a language purist, but I have embraced the addition of this verb) blog-spamming and found that it is apparently an attempt to draw the attention of search engines (such as Google) to have a website ranked higher in search results.

Extra traffic to the website would be a good thing. Maybe I need to change my name to Aloysius Babblebum and dive into the blog-commenting.

Discover your inner Dickens with a book of names (shameless self-promotion):

Is your Name Famous?