Author: Jim

Chapter 11 A Companion Picture Carton and Stryver have been working and drinking through the night, as is their custom. They maintain this untenable habit by covering their heads in wet towels to keep their hangover heads from throbbing too much while they work. Stryver: I need to tell you something: I’m getting married, and… Read more

Forward In the course of reading this book, I find myself stopping every few pages to look up a word, phrase, or just to place the meaning in a historical context. I discovered a site called Discovering Dickens: A Community Reading Project that does just that, and have found it immensely helpful. If you are… Read more

BOOK THE SECOND The Golden Thread Chapter 1 Five Years Later Tellson’s Bank was “very small, very dark, very ugly, and very incommodious” and its owners were very proud of this. Looking disreputable is the best way to look reputable by their logic. It “was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience.” Dickens then spends almost a… Read more

Welcome friends and neighbors and thank you for joining me on my inaugural journey of Charles Dickens’ 1859 classic novel. To start, here is a comprehensive list of all the things I know about A Tale of Two Cities: 1) It starts with the line “It was the best of times, it was the worst… Read more

Welcome to my new blog! This whole thing started on a whim. My wife, Colleen, LOVES Jane Austen. I…do not. But, being a good husband, I decided to read her most famous work, Pride and Prejudice, so I could be more familiar with the things she likes. I posted about it on Facebook and a… Read more

I went into this with literally no expectations. I kind of viewed Jane Austen as old timey romance novels, and contrary to the normal stereotype of males in their 30’s, this is not my typical fare. The copy I got was the Fall River Press Illustrated Edition complete with pen and ink illustrations by Charles… Read more