Starting early, sort of.

Well, I'm still technically starting in January. But since I'm starting with Dickens, I've decided to incorporate another of my holiday traditions: trying to read all of Dickens' Christmas stuff during Advent. My parents have a set of Dickens that includes a big 800+ page volume of Christmas stories, and every year since I was, oh, twelve, I've decided that I'm going to read the whole thing before Christmas. I've never succeeded. I always get through A Christmas Carol and sometimes The Chimes and occasionally partway into The Cricket on the Hearth, but I don't think I've ever made it farther than that. So! This is the year! But to make it even harder on myself more interesting, I will first read The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford. Look for a schedule in the next post!