Please Introduce Yourself

[Mary Lou]

Hi, Tracey - nice to see you here!

[John]

Hello from Philadelphia, I'm new-member John. I was on my own Dickens reading plan and found this group on Goodreads ... I've caught up to Chuzzlewit and wanted to join in.

I've really enjoyed reading past comments. I think people were a bit mean to the character Barnaby, but I'm over it now. Looking forward to more commentary ... never read most of the books ahead of us, and I'm happy for that I think. Anticipating a lot of fun. Thanks for the group!

[Mary Lou]

Welcome, John! I envy that you will be able to enjoy several Dickens novels for the first time. The best are yet to come! You have the joy of discovery ahead, and I look forward to enjoying them again through your eyes. :-)

[[deleted user]]

Welcome John!
And I hope that being a bit mean to fictional characters helps us being less mean to real people, since we got the gall out of our system ;-)

[Peter]

Welcome John

We look forward to your ideas, insights, and comments.

Peter

[John]

Thanks for the welcome! I look forward to some fun discussions.

I just commented in the Barnaby wrap-up ... thank you, Jantine. Your response made me think more clearly about it.

My protest for better treatment of Barnaby wasn't really about the actual character. I just thought he was a brilliant symbol of what Dickens was trying to say.

[Bionic Jean]

Welcome to all the new members :) If you love the works of "The Inimitable", then this is definitely the best place to be! I hope you enjoy being a member of the Curiosities, and to see you around in the discussions.

[Kim]

Welcome John it's nice to meet you, I hope you have fun while you're here.

[Tristram]

Hello John,

A hearty welcome to our group, and please feel free to join our discussions! If you think we were mean to Barnaby, you should take a look at the Old Curiosity Shop discussions and see our discussion about Little Nell ;-)

[Kim]

Poor, poor Little Nell. :-(

[ScottOnTheFen]

Hello everyone.

I am hoping to read more and make some new friends here on goodreads.com. I'm currently reading Middlemarch and hope to be ready to join a group read some time around the end of February. I see you will be reading Dombey and Son then; one I've always liked the sound of. I have not read much Dickens, only Great Expectations, I think, which I did enjoy a great deal. I like 19th Century literature more with each novel I read. I live near Cambridge, UK.

[Mary Lou]

Welcome, Scott! We're glad to have you here, and look forward to having you join in the Dombey discussions. It will be nice to have another of Dickens' countrymen in the group so that our friend Jean won't feel so outnumbered. :-) If you haven't already been there, perhaps our readings will inspire you to visit the Dickens House Museum the next time you're in London.

[Peter]

Hello Scott.

Great to have you aboard. Dombey and Son is a great read. We hope you enjoy our discussions.

[ScottOnTheFen]

Mary Lou wrote: "perhaps our readings will inspire you to visit the Dickens House Museum the next time you're in London"

I didn't know it was there, but it seems it's a very short walk from King's Cross which I pass through from time to time. I'm sure I will visit this year. Thank you. :)

[Tristram]

Welcome to the Old Curiosity Club, Scott! You picked a good time to join because some of us, and I'd include myself, think that Dombey and Son is one of Dickens's best, albeit under-appreciated novels, and I am looking forward to discovering its many merits with the group.

By the way, it's been a long time I last visited the Dickens House, but I'd love to go there again, perhaps taking my children, because it was really great to get so much insight into Dickens's life in a place he actually spent so much time in. I'd also recommend a visit to Gad's Hill, preferably at the time of the Dickens Festival in Rochester.

[ScottOnTheFen]

I am in Kent less often but I'm the right end of the country so it may well happen at some point. I am looking forward to Dombey and Son. All I need do is choose a suitable edition. I like the Everyman's Library hardbacks, I have Middlemarch in that and it's a pleasant binding and typeface.

[Kim]

Welcome Scott, it's nice to meet you. And I agree with Tristram (once in awhile) Dombey is a great time to join us, it's one of my favorites too. Now I've agreed with him again, it's late, I must be tired. Again, welcome. :-)

[Tristram]

Kim, you should agree more often with me! It makes me feel I'm right :-)

[ScottOnTheFen]

Thank you all for the welcome. It looks like I’ve found a very friendly and active group with an interesting cast! 😉 I hope to make some friends and get back into my reading now my son is a little older. I’ve only read Great Expectations by Dickens so far, which I am very fond of. I am really looking forward to D&S.

[Lisa]

Enjoy Middlemarch. That book is worth its own book club don’t you think? So good!

[John]

Makes me wonder whether I should read Middlemarch. My familiarity begins and ends with the title.

[ScottOnTheFen]

I'm half way through and enjoying it a lot. I am already resolved to read it again one day, perhaps more than once, and re-reading is rare for me; I'm just very aware there are depths and language I am not and could not entirely plumb on my first read through. The characters seem like real people, the web of events and relationships being woven between everyone is building so that it makes it harder to put down with every chapter I read. At times I am captured by the romance, and there's plenty of that in all shapes and sizes, at others by the drama, and quite often by the mere conversations people have with one another about life, love, religion, art, .. it's very, very impressive.

As an aside, I have read Silas Marner and something I remember being pleasantly surprised by was the way Eliot captured the speech and turns of phrase of the more common characters in the story. These particular manners of speech and sayings people have, or the way Eliot spells words to convey how they were said, are there in Middlemarch too. It's how my father talks, and my aunties and uncles, and especially my grandmother. Eliot clearly knew well the vein of English peoples my family is mined from. I'll always be fond of her writing for that reason alone, let alone that she's a wonderful writer of good stories; the pages of her books contain where I'm from, not in a directly remembered past but in the people and places that shaped the people who shaped the people who shaped me - the common ones, that is! :)

I've written too much and don't have time to make it shorter now.. ;) Good night!

[David]

Hello everyone - I'm fairly new to Dickens, and only started reading my first - The Old Curiosity Shop - in January.

I was hooked straightaway and have gone through Great Expectations and Pickwick Papers since. I'm planning to read them in order (just started Oliver Twist last night).

Apart from Dickens I read mainly crime thrillers (sorry), but also things like Idaho.

Looking forward to "meeting" some of you.

[Tristram]

Hello David,

Welcome to the Old Curiosities! If you like joining or just following animated discussions on Charles Dickens's novels, this is a good place for you to be. We read Dickens's novels in their order of publication and in between these long texts we deal with shorter fiction by Dickens. In December, we usually read one of the Inimitable's Christmas stories. Right now, we are in the middle of Dombey and Son, which means that in summer, we will start with David Copperfield. We normally go by the instalments in which the novels were originally published, but, of course, we do monthly instalments as weekly readings because otherwise it would simply take too long.

If you want to join our discussions, feel welcome! If you just want to chat, we have a thread for that - it is always named after one of the pubs or inn featuring in the novel we are reading -, but even in our discussion threads, we often talk about things only loosely associated with the chapters in question. I think there has never been a thread, where our moderator Kim did not call me a grump sooner or later ;-)

Enjoy!

[Peter]

Welcome David

Find yourself a comfortable chair and join us in our readings and general discussions.

You can’t go wrong reading Dickens.

[Kim]

Welcome David, it's nice to meet you! I see you had the very normal good sense to fall in love with Dickens just from reading The Old Curiosity Shop. I only know one person who doesn't absolutely love Little Nell and break down in tears every time we read about her death, but he's always been a grump. :-) Just jump in any time David, you're always welcome.

[Kim]

Now I have to go search through all our old threads to see if perhaps there's a slight chance there's one Tristram wasn't a grump in it.

[[deleted user]]

Welcome David! Good to see there are more people converted to Dickensianism ;-)

[David]

I am loving this place ! I had just finished Pickwick Papers and was going on to Oliver Twist, but now I've jumped to Dombey & Son and will be up with you guys in a week or so.
Being given stuff to think about as I progress through the books is making it much more rewarding - I was missing so much.
See you in the Dombey thread soon...

[Peter]

David wrote: "I am loving this place ! I had just finished Pickwick Papers and was going on to Oliver Twist, but now I've jumped to Dombey & Son and will be up with you guys in a week or so.
Being given stuff to..."

David

Great stuff. We’ll be seeing - well, actually reading - you soon.

[Kim]

I'm looking forward to you joining us David. See you soon. :-)

[Mary Lou]

David wrote: "I am loving this place ! I had just finished Pickwick Papers and was going on to Oliver Twist, but now I've jumped to Dombey & Son and will be up with you guys in a week or so.
Being given stuff to..."

Welcome, David. I'm so glad you've discovered Dickens and our little group. I'm taking a break from Dombey, but looking forward to discussing Great Expectations with you when we start that one. Even if you don't read it again, it should be fresh enough in your mind to jump in to the discussion.

[Bobbie]

Also, glad to have you here David. I also am taking a break and trying to get caught up with some other reading for awhile. I also have decided that I need to be reading some lighter things for awhile. I am just not in the mood for anything very heavy during this difficult time. Glad you are enjoying the group.

[Tristram]

Even if you take a break from our present read, please don't forget to look in at our local pub from time to time! I'd love to know how you are faring!

[Ulysse]

Hello everyone, I found my way here thanks to Tristram's kind invitation. I'm very excited to join ranks with you and embark on a journey to the land of middle-Dickens.

I'm Ulysse, very nice to meet you. I live in France in a small village surrounded by the most beautiful trees you'll ever see (we moved here from Paris last month). I am however not French. I grew up in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. My father is Belgian and my mother is Portuguese and I spent a good part of my childhood in a country that used to be called Zaïre and is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. I'm still trying to figure out where I'm from.
I make a living teaching English but I live for music (I'm a singer-songwriter) and literature.
I first "discovered" Dickens in the Summer of 2003. That Summer I read Expectations, Curiosity, Pickwick and Dombey all in a row and thought ok one more. After a few chapters of Chuzzlewit I felt like I was starting to lose my mind.
Since then I haven't really been able to enjoy Dickens as much as I did in my more innocent days. I'm hoping that by joining this group my passion for all things Dickens will rekindle with renewed ardor. I'm certainly looking forward to sharing thoughts and impressions with you all.

[David]

hi Ulysse - what a wonderful name ! Great to have you in the group. I'm a relative newcomer and I've read the same number as you.

[Peter]

Ulysse wrote: "Hello everyone, I found my way here thanks to Tristram's kind invitation. I'm very excited to join ranks with you and embark on a journey to the land of middle-Dickens.

I'm Ulysse, very nice to m..."

Welcome Ulysse

No, you are not losing your mind. Many people find Chuzzlewit sadly lacking. I certainly do.

We lived in Victoria BC before moving back to Toronto to become part time babysitting grandparents. We have much in common. My wife is Portuguese and if I’m not reading Dickens I’m playing and listening to The Blues, especially Chicago Blues.

I hope you enjoy our group. Welcome aboard.

[Mary Lou]

Welcome, Ulysse. My daughter spent a summer working in Kinshasa. Your "global citizenship" ought to bring an interesting perspective to our discussions. We have members from various countries, but none I can think of who've lived on three continents. Hope you'll join us for David Copperfield in a few weeks.

[Julie]

Hello, Ulysse! I live just over the border from Vancouver in Bellingham, Washington. And I joined up here just in time to start the full opus with Pickwick Papers, and stayed the course all the way through Chuzzlewit, where I bailed out midway through in need of a break.

I've been enjoying Dombey since, and look forward to reading further with you!

[Ulysse]

David wrote: "hi Ulysse - what a wonderful name ! Great to have you in the group. I'm a relative newcomer and I've read the same number as you."

Thanks David!

[Ulysse]

Peter wrote: "Ulysse wrote: "Hello everyone, I found my way here thanks to Tristram's kind invitation. I'm very excited to join ranks with you and embark on a journey to the land of middle-Dickens.

I'm Ulysse,..."

Hi Peter, looks like we might have been neighbours at some point. I grew up across the water in a quaint seaside town called Crescent Beach. Perhaps you've been there?

Chuzzlewit wasn't so much a problem as the fact of having ingurgitated such a vast amount of Dickens in the span of one Summer. I like this group's idea of reading Dickens, by monthly instalments, which was the way his first readers discovered his wonderful books.

[Ulysse]

Julie wrote: "Hello, Ulysse! I live just over the border from Vancouver in Bellingham, Washington. And I joined up here just in time to start the full opus with Pickwick Papers, and stayed the course all the way..."

Hi Julie, Belligham's a lovely town. I used to go there a lot when I was a teenager. Last time was in 2009. Glad you were able to make it all the way to Dombey!

[Ulysse]

Mary Lou wrote: "Welcome, Ulysse. My daughter spent a summer working in Kinshasa. Your "global citizenship" ought to bring an interesting perspective to our discussions. We have members from various countries, but ..."

Thank you Mary Lou! I have a lot of memories of Kinshasa, some good, some not so good. I bet the city has changed a lot since the 1980's. Must have been an eye-opening experience for your daughter.

[[deleted user]]

Welcome, Ulysse! I hope you will enjoy Dickens again when you read it at a slower pace with us :-D There is so much to enjoy! And the slower pace makes it a bit easier to read other things in between too.

[Bobbie]

Welcome, Ulysse! I am sure you will enjoy this group. I joined with Nicholas Nickleby, skipped The Old Curiosity Shop because I had read it before, and then joined in for Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit and then skipped Dombey and Son simply because I needed a break. I will pick it up at some point. So, as you see, I am picking and choosing. I will be joining in for David Copperfield as a re-read after many years.
I have a great interest in France but will probably never make it there. Two of my sons have been there as teens and we had 2 teen boys as exchange students years ago. That was such a great experience. My son has 2 books translated into French and made several trips there promoting. But my great reading interest is in the British Isles, hence Dickens.
Glad to have you in the group.

[Tristram]

Hi Ulysse,

I am glad to find you have followed my hint ;-) I hope you are going to enjoy our weekly discussions, which go at such a leisurely pace that you can read lots of other books at the same time.

[Ulysse]

Jantine wrote: "Welcome, Ulysse! I hope you will enjoy Dickens again when you read it at a slower pace with us :-D There is so much to enjoy! And the slower pace makes it a bit easier to read other things in betwe..."

Hello Jantine, I think reading Dickens at a slower pace will be the perfect cure for a Dickens hangover.

[Ulysse]

Bobbie wrote: "Welcome, Ulysse! I am sure you will enjoy this group. I joined with Nicholas Nickleby, skipped The Old Curiosity Shop because I had read it before, and then joined in for Barnaby Rudge and Martin C..."

Hello Bobbie, I'm sorry to hear that you'll never make it to this beautiful country. Travelling has become a risky undertaking like it was 200 years ago. Maybe the planet will be all the better for it? Anyway, a true reader knows that the easiest (and best) way to travel is to open a book and start reading. On the wings of thought can we go to any place or any time period we like. Who needs a time machine when we've got writers like Dickens, right?

[Ulysse]

Tristram wrote: "Hi Ulysse,

I am glad to find you have followed my hint ;-) I hope you are going to enjoy our weekly discussions, which go at such a leisurely pace that you can read lots of other books at the same..."

Thanks again for the invite, Tristram. This is my first ever club. It's exciting!

[Bobbie]

Absolutely, but I really do love to travel. My husband and I are just not up to it now at our age, but who knows if it will be better in the future.