LazyKat25

I’m a visual learner, perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved museums. It was a love that eventually brought me to work in them as well.

It’s a shame really that despite this, and my close proximity to NYC, that I don’t get to visit them more.

I hope to change that.

I’ll admit that while I had obviously heard of this book and had read several of Dickens’s stories before, I didn’t know anything about this one. I didn’t even know which two cities he was referring to in the title until I read it.

I find that reading a book that you know absolutely nothing about from the start is a rather unique experience, one not many of us undertake with descriptive book jackets, word of mouth, online reviews, and movie adaptations making it nearly impossible.

Somehow, for me, this book was able to slip through the cracks. The only thing I knew about it was that it was a bit more serious than Dickens’s other stories and many consider it to be his best (I’ve always been partial to David Copperfield).

I’ll admit, it took me a while to get into it and I wasn’t sure where it was going at times. I found it quite evident in a few chapters that this story was originally written to be published as a serial. But I found it certainly grabbed you by the end. I think Sidney Carton’s character should have been flushed out a bit more so we could have had more insight into his motives. I wasn’t sure through most of it if he was a villain or not, if he and Charles Darnay were going to turn out to be twins or what. In the end, his actions took me completely by surprise, and I suppose that is why Dickens presented him the way he did, perhaps to show that in the midst of such horror, true kindness could come from the least expected of places.

While a history buff, I’m not hugely familiar with the French Revolution. Dicken’s description of the French mob was chilling and made an impression on me. It depicts the power of the oppressed when they are pushed beyond desperation, and the sheer evil that immerges when revenge becomes the only food the hungry crave. I’ll never look at knitting the same way again.

May take a break from the list and try something light next.

I really love my job, but it pays next to nothing. So they either need to pay me a real salary, or I need to move on. Now that I have a diploma, I have a bit more leverage than before. Let’s see how far it gets me.