Before I begin my blog, I would first like to say that I find it extremely strange that Rhiannon is reading Wuthering Heights (Teghan's favorite book) and Teghan is reading Dorian Gray (my absolute favorite) and none of this was planned. Unless of course, they planned this while I was in hermitude and it is all just a great conspiracy behind my back.
...
Anyways. I didn't blog last night because I was extremely disappointed in my own progress with David Copperfield, perhaps it wasn't advisable to read two classics in a row, specially since Copperfield is such a dense one. I started it on Tuesday and continued to read it on Wednesday but have barely managed to get halfway through (I am currently on page 312 out of 765 pages of tiny print). For the moment, I will blame my slow advancement on the fact that I overslept and worked for 7 hours last night, as I don't want to read too much into it.
Today, I decided to take a break from immensely dense classics and moved on to start reading Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner. I've been waiting to read this one in french, but since I can't seem to be able to find the original french version anywhere, and I was AT the library for 7 hours anyway, I decided to just go ahead and read it anyway.
However, I'll go into a detailed report of Nikolski tomorrow, since I have almost finished it and feel like I can better judge it once I've read all of it. I am not to sure about finishing David Copperfield tomorrow, so I'll just give my half-way report on it now:
As with all Charles Dickens novels, I always begin to question if he just dragged them a little too long because he either really enjoyed long novels, or because he got paid per segment written. Either way, needless to say that the book does not leave anything out from the minute David Copperfield is born until...well I don't know, I have only just reached his youth at page 312.
It's not to say that the writing is anything short of wonderful, or that the descriptions don't create spotless images in your mind;nonetheless, the lengthiness of it certainly does stifle the plot here and there, and it certainly did send me fleeing to a lighter novel (Nikolski). I won't lie, don't read it unless you have the patience for classics.
Personally, I love classics. As Teghan already knows, if I could talk like people do in classic novels, in that long, drawn out sort of way, I definitely would. I still do, despite raised eyebrows and such. However, even with my attitude towards classics, David Copperfield is a long one. So far, I am enjoying how facts that seemed insignificant in the first few chapters are coming back and becoming suddenly relevant. I'm also, as always, loving Dickens' wonderful choice of words in every single sentence. It's certainly not the type of book you can breeze through, but I think that if I stick with it, it'll be worth the patience.
So, I'll write again to review Nikolski once I've finished it, and I'll do my best to finish David Copperfield as well, so as to reach my goal of three books.
Wish me luck!
-Niyousha
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