Dickens

Happy 200th Birthday Charles

My first (and by far the greatest) professor of entomology had a passionate love for the Hemiptera, the music of Johannes Brahms and writings of Charles Dickens. My only contact with Dickens had been in junior high and high school. Though I can't say I hated the reading we did, it left no lasting memory. But when Carl Schaefer many years later convinced me to try Dickens again it was with a sense of wonder that I discovered the many pleasures of his enormous output. I began with Bleak House, loved it, and immediately set about reading all of his novels, in chronological order (with the sole exceptions of the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the, I think, unreadable The Old Curiosity Shoppe). Thus began a few years of memorable delight. This might be a good time for others to take up the challenge. Listen to the piece on Dickens on NPR here.