True Confessions

I like to think that I am an educated person.  I own a bookstore and work in a library.  I have read widely, including some of the more challenging classics.  But here we go......my name is Terry Lucas and I have never read anything by Charles Dickens.

Until now.  I am in love with David Copperfield.  Now strictly speaking, I am not reading David Copperfield; I am listening to the book on tape as I commute to my library job.  Simon Vance, the narrator, (who, oddly enough, also narrates the Steig Larsson "Girl Who" books) does a marvelous job of capturing the pacing and the voices of the many characters. But it is the timelesss writing of Charles Dickens that brings readers to his work year after year.  What was I thinking by skipping this author all these years?

From the lovely Peggotty who loves little David as if he is her own boy to the malevolent Jane Murdstone, the people who inhabit the world of David Copperfield spring to life.  You can see the little graveyard in David's hometown and imagine the boat that is a house, inhabited by Mr. Peggotty, Ham, Little Em'ly and the eternally suffering Mrs. Gummidge. Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep appear in this novel and I now have personalities and stories to go with those well-known names. By turns funny and touching and even a little frightening, David Copperfield is a pure pleasure. 

Keep those pages turning......