Beginnings and Ends

I finished the book I've been reading since January 23rd, the day we left for Thailand. I had looked for the biggest book I could find. I had spent my last trip to Asia reading and reading, but I was alone for a lot of that trip. Let's just say I was sorely mistaken about the amount of reading time I was to have this go around.

I bought "Our Mutual Friend" by Dickens. I've always really enjoyed Dickens and his description of people. He's really hilarious too, I catch myself laughing out loud at ole Dicky. His stories and plot lines are so intricate, it must be from writing for serial reading (some of them). I've read Great Expectations (my favorite book ever), Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

Anyway, Our Mutual Friend is huge, HUGE. It's a really big, trade-paperback size book and the writing is tiny. So small. That's why I picked this book, I figured I'd race right through the fucker.

But it just didn't sit right on the plane, John Grisham sits right on a plane (how do you sit on a plane?), but Dickens? Not so much. it took me a long time to get into it, I think the train ride to Chiang Mai, when I had a few hours to myself to get immersed in it.

But once I did, I LOVED it. Love. It's a story of karmic retribution, a little like Count of Monte Cristo (another of my favorite stories of all time), a little karmic love story. I'm probably ruining it, but everyone gets what they deserve in the end, even the people who might have acted horribly at one time or another, are absolved in the end if they were truly good people.

And I know its overdone and such, but the names, the names are characters in and of themselves. If I say there is a man and wife called "The Boffins" you might get a really good sense of what they're like before you ever read the actual book. Or "Mortimer Lightwood" or "Rogue Riderhood." I mean come on!

Anyway, I finished it finally and it was just such a pleasant joy. I think more Dickens for me.