Dickens: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: Starts out pretty good, but leaves you wishing it would just
Review: This books starts out fairly good and then picks up steam in its description of Dickens' youth. But somewhere near the middle it seems to get lost in endless facts which might be called useless. I personally don't care about every single item in Dickens business affairs. I would have personally rather seen more about public reactions to each novel and more discussion about the development of each novel. This would have been a pretty good book had the author cut it in half and perhaps titled it "Dickens: His Life Before 40".

Rating:
Summary: worse then boring
Review: two stars due to the tons of information, but way too much that is strangely disconnected from Dickens' vibrant writing and his nearly frantic appreciation of life. Reading this (many passages you have to skip through they are so deadly), it's as though Kaplan waded through all of Dickens' writings even though not one of the novels struck a chord and really got to him. And there's that deadly present tense, i.e. Dickens goes here instead of went, writes to Forster instead of wrote; only makes it all more artificial, distant, bloodless, boring.

Rating:
Summary: worse then boring
Review: two stars due to the tons of information, but way too much that is strangely disconnected from Dickens' vibrant writing and his nearly frantic appreciation of life. Reading this (many passages you have to skip through they are so deadly), it's as though Kaplan waded through all of Dickens' writings even though not one of the novels struck a chord and really got to him. And there's that deadly present tense, i.e. Dickens goes here instead of went, writes to Forster instead of wrote; only makes it all more artificial, distant, bloodless, boring.