Dickensblog

Pop quiz!

But first . . .

A huge thank you to Mo, who has joined the Dickens Bicentennial Charity Fundraiser readathon! Mo is currently reading Great Expectations and raising money for the Great Ormond Street Hospital for children. If you'd like to sponsor her, go here. And if you'd like to join the readathon yourself, go here to get the details and sign up. We have two readers now; we could use more!

And now for another chance to help raise funds: Below the cut is a quiz. I'm giving you eight quotes from Dickens characters; you have to name the character and the book. First person to get them all right gets to pick a charity from our list, to which I will donate $20.

Ready, set, go!

Dickens in 'USA Today'

It's USA Today's turn to have a bicentennial story. This one apparently starts off with a quiz of some sort, but my browser is messing up the format so that it looks all weird. However, the point seems to be to determine whether "you're a regular Dickensian." I think most of us here can safely say that whether we're able to take it or not!

'TIME' magazine update

Radhika Jones, author of that excellent TIME article about the bicentennial, has started blogging about what she considers the ten greatest Dickens novels. She's already done 10 (Oliver Twist), 9 (Dombey and Son), 8 (Hard Times), and 7 (The Pickwick Papers). Start here and keep clicking to see all her posts so far.

Dickens on the silver screen

Wonderful news in the paper today: We're getting a Dickens film festival in my area! Well, we're getting it at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, Md. Which is something of a trek, but at least it's Metro-accessible.

At the very least, I'm going to see the 1958 A Tale of Two Cities. Can't wait to see Dirk Bogarde and Dorothy Tutin bigger than life!

(I don't think this is part of the BFI Dickens on Film tour. Looks like a different batch of films.)

In case of swooning, break glass

I got a kick out of this story: For Gerald Dickens's upcoming performance of "Sikes and Nancy," an herbal shop has re-invented smelling salts.

Lucky Brits

ITV Studios Home Entertainment is releasing a new box set consisting of the 1946 Great Expectations, the 1948 Oliver Twist, and best of all, my favorite version of A Tale of Two Cities (1958)! And "notable extras" as well. But I'm very worried that it will only be a Region 2 release, and we Americans will be out of luck. I've written the company to ask about it, and a nice lady has promised to do some research and let me know. But the fact that it shows up on Amazon.co.uk but not on Amazon.com gives me a very bad feeling.

Man, oh, man, the Brits get all the good stuff. If there's no Region 1 version of this, I'm going to feel exactly like a kid locked out of a candy store. Currently, the only DVD release you can get of that ATOTC film in America has Chinese subtitles that won't turn off. As you can imagine, it puts a bit of a damper on things.

Get your bicentennial gear here!

Some enterprising souls at Zazzle and CafePress have created some very nice bicentennial fashions! Check out their shops here, here, and here.

Celebration in Bath

Tickets are available for a Dickens birthday celebration at the Pump Room in Bath. Which, I imagine, would allow one to feel like a Dickensian and an Austenite at the same time.

Dickens shoutout on 'White Collar'

So, did you see Matt Bomer teaching A Tale of Two Cities tonight? It was worth seeing! The episode should be up on the USA site eventually, though I'm not sure when.

Let your voice be heard!

Barbara, one of our readers, e-mails: "We are trying to get a petition going to reverse the Charles Dickens Museum closure decision. If you would be so inclined as to have your name on our petition would you mind sending an email of support (and any other comments) to stephenjarvis at hotmail dot com. Please feel free to pass Stephen's email address on as we are trying to get as many signatures as possible."