Amadan na Briona

I probably read Dickens's A Christmas Carol when I was a child, but after seeing so many different film versions, like everyone else, it was hard to remember what I had read and what I remembered from a cartoon or old classic movie or Muppets version. So this was a good time to revisit the original.

A Christmas Carol is a short book- very short by Dickens standards. Dickens makes the most of his gift for language in bringing Ebenezer Scrooge alive in all his misanthropic glory, condemning the heartlessness of Victorian England, and rallying the sentiments of his readers by invoking the image of Tiny Tim's crutches leaning alone in a corner.

I like Dickens but have often criticized him for padding his stories out. Not so in this one, and A Christmas Carol is a fun, sentimental read. It may not quite have the epic majesty or breadth of social critique in Dickens's longer works, but it's no less a Dickens work, and there's no excuse for anyone not to partake of the original.

Definitely one of my favorite Dickens, and not just because it's so short!

I listened to this as an audiobook read by Tim Curry, and it was excellent. Curry was a perfect narrator, and I highly recommend this as a superior alternative to yet another CD full of Christmas tunes, when you are sick of listening to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or Silent Night.