oh yeah... i liked this one also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTymtAbaG08

loved johnny brown singing this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Mh3DNaXDw

What just happened? A perfectly sound conversation, and then........................HIPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0Dm-OaTNk (no rolls!)

Must ... not ... post ... 5th Dimension.

If we're going to get off track at Woodstock, we should start at the beginning...

http://youtu.be/TrWNTqbLFFE

I liked the miniseries too. I don't think I've ever read the book but I've thought about reading it. Though I guess it's possible I actually have read it ages ago. The distasteful sycophant rang a bell but I may be getting him mixed up with a similar character in a different novel.

Tried the Pickwick Papers at one stage, not too many years ago, but couldn't quite get into it. It might just have been the wrong time for it.

It probably makes me a bad person, but I don't really like his work. A Christmas Carol and Tale of Two Cities are good. The rest I've read is just not that great. I thought Great Expectations was one of the worst books I've ever picked up.

It doesn't make you a bad person, but it does mean that your opinion of what qualifies as 'good' literature is suspect.

As far as goes, Dickens was an excellent writer, one of the best English writers of all time.

The main problem with his work is that all or almost all of his work was originally serialized in magazines and newspapers, which meant that he had an incentive to make his stories as long as possible. The common assertion that he was paid by the word is wrong, but not far off. He wasn't literally paid by the word, but he was paid by the number of installments. A story which was originally plotted to be in 6 parts could, and often did, end up getting extended to 10 parts or 12 parts if the story proved really popular with readers and the newspaper asked him to make it longer. Also, since his works were published in monthly installments, this meant that during the writing process, he got feedback from readers, and often he would change his plan halfway through a story in response to criticisms or suggestions from readers.

So the two biggest flaws of his work, a tendency to pad stories with irrelevant details and a tendency for the story to undergo a radical shift halfway through, are both products of the way he published his stories.

This is why, on the whole, the stories that he did not serialize, such as A Christmas Carol, tend to be better than the ones that he did serialize.

Rarnaby Budge?
Karnaby Fudge?
Farmer of Sludge?
Stickwick Stapers?

One really good example of how his plan for a story changed halfway through due to feedback from readers is Oliver Twist. The villain of the story is Fagin, who is the criminal boss of the gang of the boys whom he teaches to be pickpockets.

Dickens wrote the story to make the point it was wrong the police to focus on arresting petty thieves, like the young boys in Fagin's gang, because often those petty criminals are themselves, victims of someone much eviler, and also that guys like Fagin were the real villains, whom the police should focus on, because you can arrest Oliver Twists and it won't matter because Fagin is still out there and he will train 10 more pickpockets to take Oliver's place.

It is largely due to the influence of people like Dickens that most of modern law enforcement is focused on arresting the biggest criminals, and giving the small criminals immunity from prosecution to get them to turn on their bosses.

However, one thing that Dickens was criticized for in Oliver Twist is that Fagin was a Jew, and the fact that he was a Jew was given strong emphasis in the early parts of the story, as he often doesn't describe Fagin by name and instead calls him stuff like 'the old Jew'.

Dickens insisted that by making Fagin a Jew he was merely being accurate because many of the real life Fagin's were indeed Jews, and there were many Jewish criminal gangs out there so that it would be dishonest to make Fagin anything other than a Jew.

However, even though many were willing to concede the point about accuracy, many people felt that Dickens still gave far more attention to Fagin's Jewishness than the story really warranted and that constantly referring to Fagin as 'the Jew' was antisemitic.

Dickens was really stung and hurt by that criticism because in point of actual fact he was not at all racist or bigoted and held very enlightened views on race, and he was not at all antisemitic and in fact wrote stories criticizing racism and antisemitism. So, halfway through the book, Dickens suddenly stops calling Fagin 'the Jew' and it suddenly appears as if Fagin is no longer Jewish. The way the book abruptly changes how it refers to Fagin is rather jarring and seems kind of weird.

With 2 Ks.

I just read 'To Be Read at Dusk'. It was weird. I didn't read it at dusk though, so that might explain it.

are you always this rebellious ... with a total disregard for direction?