It's funny the books that slip by you. I feel like there's an everpresent list of books one "should have read." When I once told one of my favorite English professors that no matter how many classics I read, I still don't feel well read, he responded that at seventy-something years old, he still doesn't feel read. Better get used to it.

But I like to play catch-up nonetheless. As classic as Christmas stories get, A Christmas Carol is certainly the flagship. After having seen many cinematic, theatrical, and Philadelphian Macy's Department Store Dickens's Village representations of Dickens's story, I finally read the book, which not surprisingly, was very much like its representations.

The easy-to-read morality tale is as simply orchestrated as the message is simple to grasp. Essentially, we have life, we can choose to enjoy it or choose to not. Period. Dickens states his claim at which path is more enlightened, and after reading Scrooge's story, one can't help but agreeing. Interestingly, this very common and culturally significant story still touches the reader in an intrinsic and fundemental way. I got a little teary when Belle broke off her engagement to Scrooge, even though I knew it was coming. Bah humbug to being a sap.

The one thing the book provides that cannot be represented elsewhere is the meta-fiction that Dickens inlcudes, occasionally pulling back from the story and directly talking to the audience, which is a pleasure and fun to take in.

It's a classic, so catch-up.