Top Books Blog

Wonderful Gift Book (2009-04-03)
While I'm not fully conversant with the gift publishing genre, this has to be a first. Les Standiford and Crown have created something special. The paper, its weight, texture and overall quality as well as the print and general layout appear to be of gift book quality. The text is substantive, and just deep enough for a gift book "ideal".

While not a polemic or a research piece (though it is nicely referenced)the author builds a case, not so much for Dickens' invention of Christmas, but that much of today's Christmas symbolism results from "A Christmas Carol". In doing this he tells the general life of Dickens and how he came to self publish this work under time and financial pressures.

Last year my gift book was Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's, which I don't think was designed as a gift book, but I made it one. I wasn't aware of this volume, but my receipients will enjoy it next year. I expect it will be in print for years to come, so while I missed it last year, I believe that, like Dickens' works, it will be in print for years to come and I will be one among many gifting it.

The History of a Beloved and Influential Book (2009-02-19)
Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Dickens brought out _A Christmas Carol_. Neither it nor his other novels have ever gone out of print, but this one has sparked more readings, plays, musicals, and films than any of the others, and people who know nothing of Pickwick, Nicholas Nickleby, or David Copperfield do know Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim. You might think that _A Christmas Carol_ was just one in a series of successes from the most famous of Victorian novelists, but it came at a time when Dickens was thirty-one years old and had recently done so poorly by his writing he was thinking what else he might do with his life. The great story of how this beloved novel came to be, and its influence on those who have read it ever since, is the subject of _The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits_ (Crown). Les Standiford, who writes fiction and nonfiction and teaches creative writing, has not unearthed new, original sources for this story, parts of which will be familiar to Dickens fans, but he has drawn together parts of Dickens's biography, social and church history of Christmas celebrations, and a depiction of the book and magazine publishing system in Dickens's time to make an entertaining and educational volume that anyone who loves the original book will find fascinating.

Dickens had been a hugely successful author, but in 1843 his public was not being as happy or responsive. In October he spoke at a fundraiser in Manchester, and walked the streets of the industrial city, wondering if his career was coming to an early end. The walks, and the reminders of the economic woes of the city, must have done the trick. The Christmas ghost tale took hold of him, and when he got back to London, he wrote it up in a fever. His publisher was not impressed, and Dickens had to take full responsibility for the book's production. Dickens meant to clear a thousand pounds by the book, and he had every reason to think it was going to do well for him. The public loved it and the reviews were fine. What a shock, then, to get his publisher's account and find that with charges for paper, binding, coloring the drawings, and commission for the publisher, his great success got him 137 pounds. There was a long-term profit from the book, and plenty of goodwill from the public, and so Dickens went on to other successes, never returning to anything like his 1843 nadir. _A Christmas Carol_ helped cement traditions into the Christmas celebration that were practiced by a relative few, like holly, mistletoe, and plum puddings. He didn't introduce these traditions, but he increased their appreciation and he made future celebrants think these steps were more-or-less obligatory. The book does not stress gift-giving, except in its theme of charity. One profound effect was from Scrooge's insistence on the big prize turkey being sent round to the Cratchits'. The traditional Christmas meal had been goose, but Scrooge doomed the goose industry while promoting the new field of turkey farming.

The other thing that _A Christmas Carol_ did was to promote annual Christmas good feeling. If Scrooge can improve himself, we can hope to improve ourselves; if he can keep a charitable Christmas, then so can we. Standiford is certainly right to appreciate the book as a ghost story, but not one that simply amazes or chills. "The beauty of the book is, then, [Dickens's] use of a deceptively innocent form to do such serious work." Dickens was interested in delivering what he called a "sledge-hammer blow" on behalf of the poor and unfortunate. He was nominally Anglican, but he was critical of organized religion, missionaries, and any devout hypocrisy. He produced a counterpart to the Nativity story that was not only secular but pagan, at a time when intellectual forces were about to begin to assault traditional religious thought. He allowed readers to imagine Christmases past, present, and future, and he had the honorable intention of improving them thereby. And millions of us every year take up the volume, or watch a stage presentation or a film (if you have never seen the 1951 Alastair Sim version, that's the one to get). Perhaps it is making us better individuals every year; there is surely nothing wrong with its earnest pedagogy towards charity, compassion, humane working conditions, and celebration of family life. And who will say "Bah, humbug" to all that?

Started strong, didn't last (2009-01-31)
I expected to come out of the read with more of a knowledge of Charles Dickens' life and times (which I did), and also with an uplifted, happy feeling of appreciation for his character and times (which I did not). If you are looking for a happy, heart-lifting Christmas Victorian story, this is not it. The title is mis-leading "The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spitis". Charles Dickens (as we all know) did NOT "invent Christmas", although he helped with it's revision and revival - and this was not gone into deeply in the book, merely brushed upon. It did, however, go into mind-numbingly boring accounts of how much money he made on each of his books, and his financial woes, which were mainly alleviated after the publishing and popularization of this and subsequent books.

God bless us, every one (2009-01-19)
Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite books came to be written? Les Standiford gives us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of Charles Dickens, and details the circumstances that led him to produce the world's most beloved and well-known Christmas story A Christmas Carol, while at the same time helping change the way the holiday is celebrated. This book is filled with enough fun facts to delight Dickens fans, trivia buffs, or folks who are just plain crazy about Christmas, there is something here for everyone.

The book is not without it's flaws however, at 256 pages, it still feels padded, the author uses long block quotes from Dickens works, the writing is repetitive at times, and at one point he actually spends 3 or 4 pages summarizing the Carol for the reader, when he says at several points throughout the book that the story is so well known that if all the copies were destroyed, everyone would still know it by heart. Well, which is it? One gets the feeling that when all the padding is stripped away that this material was probably better suited for a magazine article than a full-length book.

Still, Christmas is the season of forgiveness and good cheer, in that spirit, I urge readers to embrace this book as they have the original Carol.

Dickens' Commercial Christmas (2009-01-10)
In mid-December, I read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth. I was very familiar with A Christmas Carol, but had never read the other two. Then I ran across Mr. Standiford's book The Man Who Invented Christmas. I thought that it would be particularly suitable for this time of year, and I was right.

However, I did not enjoy the book as much as I expected to. The book is small and not lengthy. Even so, I felt that it could have been reduced to being a long magazine article. Mr. Standiford's writing is fine, and the subject is interesting. I just found that I was being introduced to more information about the British publishing industry than I really wanted to know. You can get a good feel for Dickens himself in the book, i.e., his early years, his family life, his occupational and financial problems. You learn about the difficulties involved with publishing a book and making any money on it. I believe you will also become convinced to read more works by Dickens.

My problems with the book had to do with a few sections that just seemed to drag. I would have been grateful for more specific information about A Christmas Carol. For example, Mr. Standiford does point out that the British geese industry ran into hard times because Dickens had the big turkey sent to the Cratchits rather than buying a goose for them. I found that to be particularly interesting, and I would have enjoyed more tidbits like that.

I did find Mr. Standiford's brief discussions of The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth to be very useful. Having just read those stories for the first time ever, I was glad to read his summaries because those stories are fairly dense and not nearly as memorable as A Christmas Carol.