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Tale of two cities - Charles Dickens

Posted: September 25th, 2007, 8:45 pm
by Arcadia
I just started!

Posted: September 25th, 2007, 9:33 pm
by e_dog
Cleveland and Detroit.


Right?

Posted: September 26th, 2007, 12:45 pm
by Arcadia
no, s. XVIII, London & Paris.

Posted: September 27th, 2007, 3:08 pm
by e_dog
oh, the manga version i read had it as Cleve. and Det.

strange. guess this Dickins fella musta copied it. figures.

Posted: September 27th, 2007, 7:19 pm
by Arcadia
manga version?! I would like to read that too!!! but sure I would miss a lot of things, I guess I have less idea about about Cleveland and Detroit than about London and Paris in 17..... The name of the two cities sounds much like a football or beisbol game for me :lol:

The beggining sounds really good!. See:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiests authorities insisted on its being received, for good of for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Posted: September 27th, 2007, 10:03 pm
by e_dog
"It was totally awesome, but it completely sucked . . ." is how it begins.

Posted: September 27th, 2007, 10:09 pm
by Totenkopf

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,
Don't begin your thesis sentences with "It," Chas! Anyhoo, typical protestant melodrama--if not irrationalism. Chas. D could scribble a bit in journalistic fashion (Great Expectations I think superior to TOTC), but a few glasses of his cheap ale a year will suffice.

Posted: September 28th, 2007, 2:07 pm
by Arcadia
"It was totally awesome, but it completely sucked . . ." is how it begins.: eloquent translation!!! I know already more or less how it ends but I have to read the whole book anyway... (you know, I´m trying to follow orders in a creative way). :wink:


Don't begin your thesis sentences with "It," : don´t worry, I´m not writing a thesis. Anyhoo, typical protestant melodrama--if not irrationalism : I didn´t thought that, thanks!. Anyway, I liked repetitive, confusing full of antonimos beginnig. Chas. ?? D could scribble a bit in journalistic fashion (Great Expectations I think superior to TOTC no idea, I didn´t read Pickwick papers. Only Hard Times and an adaptation for kids of David Copperfield. About Hard Times I didn´t remember anything (so it´s possible it impressed me a lot or nothing). but a few glasses of his cheap ale a year will suffice. It´s possible... the narrator at the beggining sounds also a bit drunk...

Posted: September 28th, 2007, 2:34 pm
by Totenkopf
Lo see-ento. I was being facetious--addressing Dickens. DickensSpeak offers some nice pleasantries now and then, and he had a good heart (and rather brilliant comic mind), but I often find his prose to be rather awkward and overly colloquial. Voltaire he was not (however I could do with a re-read of TOTC).

Posted: September 28th, 2007, 6:47 pm
by bohonato
A Tale of Two Cities is probably one of my favourite novels. I can't really defend why I like it so much, though. Perhaps I just enjoy reading about the aristocracy losing their heads?

Madame Defarge is a bad ass.

Posted: September 29th, 2007, 4:06 pm
by e_dog
Chuckie Dickens was a great writter.

His Rembrance of Things Past and that play of his, Hamlet are classic of tha West'rn cANNON.

fodder

fetters

Posted: September 29th, 2007, 5:46 pm
by stilltrucking
I liked that book a lot too Bohonato
Read it in high school
Such a blessing to have a teacher who loves to teach.
ten four on
Madame defarge
I met her in a truck stop in Atoka Oklahoma
She was a waitress there.
I spent a long fourth of July weekend in jail because of her.
But she inadvertantly saved my life.





Not sure what my favorite novel is. I have read the Bell Jar nine or ten times maybe
I do that a lot with books I love. But usually not that many times.



I did not know dickens wrote Hamlet too.
But I read his other play about MacBeth

Posted: September 29th, 2007, 6:23 pm
by Arcadia
Madame Defarge is a bad ass. ahh... someone told me that she did wild knitting or something like that but I still have to read it!!! :wink:

that´s for the imput, it´s not War & Peace but it´s a long novel...

I´ll keep you post!

Posted: October 15th, 2007, 9:14 am
by singlemalt
I read this book about four years ago and decided that Chuck Dickens and I will likely not meet up again. I suppose if there is no real means of entertainment and you read this in the 1800s in a weekly magazine, or however it was published, then you might be captivated by it.

I found it slow, plodding, and, honestly, boring. It was a labor for me to get through it. Sorry, but it was. I can't believe they make high school kids read this.

Oh well. You can't win 'em all.

Posted: October 18th, 2007, 1:41 pm
by Arcadia
can't believe they make high school kids read this.

oh... so is this book in the USA highschool canon?. What to offer to read to higschool students in the context of a literature class and how to offer to read the texts is not at all clear for me.

I suppose if there is no real means of entertainment and you read this in the 1800s in a weekly magazine, or however it was published, then you might be captivated by it.

yeah, it sounds possible!

But I also have to do the labor, anyway!!