Dickensblog

Dickens meme, day 6

A Piece of Dickens-Related Fanart

This can be something created by you, or by someone else. I'm going to link to my lovely ATOTC drawing that Nina made me! Click here to see it.

Dickens meme, day 5

Your Least Favorite Villain

See yesterday's post. You get to define the terms again, before I come up with an answer!

Dickens meme, day 4

Your Favorite Villain

I never really understood the concept of liking a villain. I mean, they're villains. They're mean and nasty. What's to like?

So I'm going to take the easy way out here, and let you all answer this one. Then I'll figure out my answer after that!

Dickens meme, day 3

Your Favorite Piece of Music that You Relate to Dickens

This can be any kind of music you want -- something from a movie soundtrack or musical, something from a fanmix, or just any old piece that makes you think of Dickens for some reason.

I have an awful lot of pieces I could name. But I'll narrow it down, and go with a tie for two songs from Oliver!: "I'd Do Anything" and "Consider Yourself."

Dickens meme, day 2

The Scene that Makes You Cry the Most

(Or just the scene that makes you feel sad or want to cry. I know for many of us, sometimes tears are just internal!)

I could name a few . . . but I think I'll go with Sydney Carton throwing himself on his bed and weeping after getting home from Stryver's.

*sniffle*

This is the meme that never ends

. . . It just keeps morphing. When I got it from goldvermilion87 on LiveJournal, it was a Sherlock Holmes meme. Before that it was a Doctor Who meme. And before that, who knows? Anyway, now it's a Dickens meme! I've shortened it from a month to a week; I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I have the attention span for a month-long meme.

(Of course, if you want to take the meme and change it yet again for your own site or blog, feel free!)

So here's the prompt for Day 1: Your Favorite Adaptation (movie, miniseries, or play).

Me . . . I think I'm going to have to go with the 2008 Little Dorrit. Though it has its flaws, still, when it works -- and that's pretty often -- it works perfectly.

Your turn!

Happy Easter!

Accordingly, Mary Magdalene went and told the Disciples that she had seen Christ, and what He had said to her; and with them she found the other women whom she had left at the Sepulchre when she had gone to call those two disciples Peter and John. These women told her and the rest, that they had seen at the Tomb, two men in shining garments, at sight of whom they had been afraid, and had bent down, but who had told them that the Lord was risen; and also that as they came to tell this, they had seen Christ, on the way, and had held him by the feet, and worshipped Him.

The Life of Our Lord, chapter 11

More casting news

"Ralph Fiennes has been approached to play the mysterious Magwitch in a new, big-screen version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations."

(Click here and scroll waaaaay down. There's also news of Rooney Mara having to turn down the part of Estella.)

Should've been a doctor

I don't know if I believe in handwriting analysis, but I find it fascinating. One expert, Allie Bradley, tried her hand at analyzing two samples of Dickens's handwriting. All these samples told me was that his handwriting was hard to read, but she deduced several personality traits from them. How do you think she did?

Dude, did you even READ the books?

The New York Post recently ran this jawdropper of a passage, quoting George Orwell:

"In George Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens, he wonders what the Victorian novelist’s heroes get up to after the books end: 'The answer evidently is that they did nothing . . . That is the spirit in which most of Dickens’ books end — a sort of radiant idleness. His heroes, once they had come into money and "settled down," would not only do no work; they would not even ride, hunt, shoot, fight duels, elope with actresses or lose money at the races. They would simply live at home in feather-bed respectability, and preferably next door to a blood-relation living exactly the same life.'"

(Full quote available here.)

I hope it doesn't look like I'm trying to detract from Orwell's undisputed greatness, if I ask what on earth he was smoking when he wrote that. I can think of maybe THREE Dickens novels that ended this way. And if you take a novel like Hard Times or Great Expectations or Little Dorrit, or any one of a number of others I could name, that's almost the exact opposite of the way that they ended.

Yes, Orwell was undoubtedly a great writer . . . but as a Dickens critic, he may have left a little something to be desired.