Dickensblog

Vote for your favorite 'Christmas Carol'!

The Mirror is taking a poll to determine readers' favorite film adaptation!

7 Quick Takes Friday

• Neil Gaiman's new reading of A Christmas Carol from October is now available to listen to at Open Culture.
• At the Houston Public Media site, Robert Cremins of the University of Houston talks about A Christmas Carol's history and enduring appeal. As he puts it, "It's more than just a story, it's a myth."
• Lucinda Dickens Hawksley has an article at the BBC website about why the world still loves her illustrious ancestor.
• In The Guardian, Claire Tomalin reviews Beryl Gray's book The Dog in the Dickensian Imagination.
• Did you know there's a crater on Mercury named for Dickens? Neither did I!
• Looking for last-minute Christmas gifts? Londonist recommends these Dickens magnets. (H/T The Buzfuz)
• Naples Illustrated shares a couple of recipes for Dickensian "Christmas cocktails."

One of those other Dickens Christmas stories

Thomas L. McDonald at God and the Machine takes a look at The Chimes, a Christmas book with "a much harder edge to it" than A Christmas Carol.

Free 'Christmas Carol' offer

If you sign up for the Random House Audio e-newsletter, you can get a free download of Jim Dale reading A Christmas Carol! The offer is good till tomorrow, Dec. 18, at noon ET.

Is an 'Oliver' remake in the works?

British choreographer Matthew Bourne told the Guardian, "There’s . . . a film of Oliver! in the pipeline. Cameron Mackintosh is hoping to follow up Les Misérables with Oliver! and I’ve never really worked on a major film so that’s exciting."

(H/T Broadway World)

Being Belinda Cratchit

In the Lebanon Democrat, actress June Lockhart shares fond memories of acting with her parents, Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, in the 1938 film of A Christmas Carol.

TCM alert

On Sunday, Turner Classic Movies has a Dickensian double feature scheduled: Great Expectations (1946) at 8 p.m. Eastern, and David Copperfield (1935) at 10:15. 

Beautiful Dickensian sentences

With help from their readers, Buzzfeed put together a list of "51 of the Most Beautiful Sentences in Literature." A sentence from A Tale of Two Cities came in at number 12. Click here and scroll down to see which one!

Which sentence from Dickens would you have nominated for the list?

Three musical 'Carols'

Three very different musical versions of A Christmas Carol are in the news:

• A new one-man opera version premiered Friday at Houston Grand Opera, co-written and directed by Dickensian actor/writer Simon Callow. The opera, and tenor Jay Hunter Morris, got a rave review in the Houston Chronicle. The show runs through Dec. 21.
• Meanwhile, the Cedar Falls Community Theatre in Cedar Falls, Iowa, is premiering Storybook Christmas, a country music version of the Carol. It updates the story to the present and seems to have some fun and creative ideas (none other than Johnny Cash is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come!). It runs through Dec. 14. 
• And on Dec. 15, the Actors Fund will present a one-night-only concert version of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol at the City Unversity of New York. The Huffington Post has the story on how this event came to be!

'A Christmas Carol' and 'The Lowell Offering'

Two researchers are exploring how much influence a publication by the mill girls of Lowell, Massachusetts, had on the creation of A Christmas Carol. The Boston Globe has the story.