What I am reading

Although this is THE christmas classic, I just now got around to read it for the first time and I absolutely love it! Scrooge and his epic “Bah, humbug!” is an amazing character, way better than his depiction in any movie adaptation I have seen (whereas my favourite one is the TV adaption from 1984).

What to say about the book, though… A Christmas Carol features a straight forward plot filled with simple but powerful emotions. Sentimentality and morality can be found in every sentence, but at the same time, it doesn’t miss out on humour – deliberate as well as unintentional humour (for example, I had to laugh when I read the sentence “Tiny Tim, who did NOT die” with “not” written in capitals for even more emphasis).

I cannot help but to see the book mainly as a child of its time – Dickens grew up during the industrial revolution which was a period of unimaginable change in lifestyle, environment and technical development. He probably witnessed a steady decline in the tradition of celebrating christmas, since many factory owners of that time were worse than Scrooge and didn’t give their workers time off, even on Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, A Christmas Carol features a universal story, which in so many ways is still relevant today.