The Old Curiosity Shop

Oh dear. I am so glad to be done with this one. As a high schooler I used to adore Dickens, and I had wanted to read this particular title for ages. Umm. I no longer like Dickens, to put it bluntly. Perhaps I just felt sophisticated reading it, back in the day. Or maybe this is just one of his shoddier novels, but I tend to think it's the first of the two. Either way, I forced myself to read the whole 600ish pages. It was boring, stuffy, and that's pretty much all there is to it. I did sort of like the Swiveller character towards the end of the book, but that's pretty much it. Kit was alright, Quilp was memorable though not particularly deep, the Nell storyline was horrid, and just, ugh. At least I read it and no longer have to worry about it. But I definitively no longer classify Dickens among my favorite authors. Bah. Maybe I'll try him again one day, but not one day soon.

P.S. - The illustrations in the Everyman's version I had, were TERRIBLE. The characters were all depicted as caricatures and it didn't help me visualize or internalize the already-boring story at all.