By Charles Dickens
Of course, A Christmas Carol receives five stars! But as I am rating the book whose title is, And Other Christmas Stories--A Christmas Tree, Christmas Dinner, Excerpts from The Pickwick Papers, I had to take it down a notch. While I appreciated Dickens ability to describe the Christmas Tree, I got lost among the boughs. Dickens literary brilliance shines in these stories. Also, my Signet Classic edition includes a fine 20-page introduction by Frederick Busch.
For this review, I simply included a few of my favorite lines:
A Christmas Carol:
"After while they played at forfeit, for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself." 102
On the laugh that bellowed from the repentant Scrooge: "Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!" 131
"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him." 138
From A Christmas Dinner:
"Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not your misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill your glass again, with a merry face and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and your new year a happy one!" 164
From A Good-Humoured Christmas
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, they can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire side and his quiet home! 172-3