Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

Book image courtesy of tower.com

Read, reviewed and released in summer, 2007

This is a classic that I've heard about almost all my life, I guess, but somehow never read until now. It is a rags to riches, boy Cinderella story about an unidentified orphan child born in a Victorian workhouse, taken in by a gang of robbers and pickpockets, but later rescued by two groups of kind people who give him a fresh start in life, and ultimately discover his true identity.

Dickens' anti-Semitism is discussed in the afterword. It was offensive to me, but I considered it a part of the times in which he lived and wrote.

Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

Read, reviewed, and released in the winter of 2008-2009

I finally finished reading it! I started it in October or November, I think. It was hard to "get into" - to get interested enough in the characters to care what happened to them, but it got exciting near the end when Stephen disappeared. One of the problems was that there were several characters, but no one main character. There was Louisa and Sissy and Stephen, but neither of them was the central character. I may like it better if I reread it in light of what I now know about them, or maybe not.