...1.7...Read Harder Update...

...y'all are probably already aware of my appreciation and admiration of Charles Dickens...

...and so when I printed out my Read Harder Challenge and the first challenge is to 1. Read a biography of an author you admire...he was naturally the first one that came to mind...

...so...a quick search of the interwebs and I found one by another one of my favorite authors...G.K. Chesterton...so how could I resist that one...

...I've not gotten very far with my list...and I'm just penciling my choices in so far...as they may change...haha...

...I thought I was going to be a little late getting started because before Christmas I started re-reading the James Heriot All Creatures series (I'd read them in Jr. High School...but not since)...and I'm really enjoying them...currently re-reading Book 3 All Things Wise and Wonderful...but then I decided to just go ahead and start...I tend to be a one-book-at-a-time sort of person...

...I'm trying to choose titles that I truly want to read...and not just checking items off the list...but I'm glad that the Read Harder Admins send an email newsletter with a list of books that will fulfill each challenge...and it was from that list that I penciled in Hamnet...you can see the similarity to Hamlet...and indeed it's about Shakespeare's wife and young son...and my library has ~ a four week wait on it...so I put in a hold for it...and I should get it about the time I'm ready to read it...

...now about the Chesterton book...I thought I'd made a mistake when I read the first chapter...as it's all about Dicken's 'greatness'...and although it's interesting...it's not my idea of a biography...so I'd say it's not a typical review of the life of a person, but a critical analysis of Dickens and his work, as in fact the title indicates...Charles Dickens: A Critical Study by G.K. Chesterton...

...but that quickly changes...and Chesterton does a superior job...

...I loved this excerpt from Chapter V... "A man reading a Le Queux mystery wants to get to the end of it. A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times because they knew it so well. If a man can read a Le Queux story six times it is only because he can forget it six times. In short, the Dickens novel was popular not because it was an unreal world, but because it was a real world; a world in which the soul could live. The modern "shocker at its very best is an interlude in life. But in the days when Dickens's work was coming out in serial, people talked as if real life were itself the interlude between one issue of "Pickwick" and another."...that's pretty much how I feel about Dickens...and you can definitely tell that Chesterton felt that way too...

...and the entire book is available online at Wiki...

...what are you reading this week?

~Have a lovely day!