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Favourite Books (57) » 73 more Books Read in 2017 (52) BBC Big Read (82) Top Five Books of 2013 (170) Five star books (19) Best of Brit Lit (94) Folio Society (53) Books Read in 2016 (286) Childhood Favorites (58) Out of Copyright (17) Top Five Books of 2018 (133) Books That Made Me Cry (107) 19th Century (55) CCE 1000 Good Books List (102) Best Young Adult (249) A Boy's Life (6) United Kingdom (72) Books Read in 2018 (3,231) Ambleside Books (242) 100 World Classics (61) Movie Adaptations (69) Books Read in 2010 (270) My favourite books (43) Best of World Literature (202) Books on my Kindle (44) 5 Best 5 Years (14) BBC Big Read (32) Art of Reading (96) Read (22) WISH LIST (2) I Can't Finish This Book (116) Books Read in 2014 (1,910) Books Read in 2015 (2,564) BBC Top Books (52) Unread books (546) Reading Dickens in publication order, this novel has the best first two hundred pages yet. Aided by Dickens' proficient use of first-person perspective, David is entirely sympathetic as a child. It's the best grasp of childhood I've read since Joyce's Portrait while David suffers awfully under the Murdstones' tyranny, and Aunt Betsey is my favourite Dickens character yet. Up to this point I was readying this novel's praises. But then ... the novel inexplicably turns away from David and he is merely witness to various drama. There's a good assortment of the usual wonderful characters here that Dickens can always muster: Pegotty and her brother are earthy and loving; Mr. Dick is a hoot; Uriah is plenty conniving, albeit not the nastiest villain Dickens has shown me (that's still Pecksniff); Emily and Agnes are only dull angels but Rosa Dartle is under a darker cast, tremendous in her vindictiveness but justified in her heart. Even so, it wasn't enough to make this portion of the story interesting, while David remained a non-player and the novel transmitted no sense of direction. But then ... David stands up to a villain, finds romance, and the novel blooms once more. Its momentum is again largely driven by his actions and choices, and from there to the end I enjoyed all the rest. It has a neat and tidy ending that's full of charm, if unlikely in some details, and it all concludes on a high note. If only it weren't for that middle portion. Written in 1850, Dickens' 16th major work, and 8th novel, is a solid four-star work. Combining the picaresque bildungsroman from Dickens' early period with the more complex character studies he was becoming known for, it's perhaps his best book to this point. Perhaps because parts of the novel are autobiographical, David starts to feel a bit real in a sense that perhaps no other character in his canon had perhaps yet reached. There's a wonderful array of supporting characters and a real sense of forward movement and thematic unity. I'm ultimately more in tune with Dickens' last works, but David Copperfield is another rung on Dickens' ladder to immortality. He's not a Tolstoy or a Flaubert, and we shouldn't expect him to be. He treats character more as something to be chronicled than to be dissected. Nevertheless, there are many great, detailed little moments in David's life, and the world around him, that suggest the continuous development of this great author. I finished this book today with a sigh of relief. I love Dickens's novels usually, which kept me going, but I found this one a chore: hellishly long (837 pages of small print), a superfluity of characters and caricatures, all of whom are afflicted with verbal diarrhoea; and burdened with a plodding narrative and a colourless central character. Much of the dialogue was mawkish, even by this author's standards. For hardened Dickens fans only. A really sweet funny book. Although I didn't like David's attitude toward his first wife. He becomes kind of a dick.
David Copperfield relates the story of his life - transmuting many of the early experience of his creator - right from his birth to his attainment of settled maturity and successful authorship. On his journey, David encounters a gallery of memorable characters, kind, cruel or grotesque: Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and Steerforth are among the many who shape his development. By turns absorbingly comic, dramatic, ironic and tender, the novel brings into energetic life the society and preoccupations of the mid-Victorian world Is contained inFive Novels: A Christmas Carol/David Copperfield/Great Expectations/Oliver Twist/A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens David Copperfield [Norton Critical Edition] by Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol / David Copperfield / Great Expectations / Oliver Twist / The Pickwick Papers / A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Kerstverhalen by Charles Dickens The complete novels of Charles Dickens by Charles Dickens Gesammelte Werke. Die Pickwickier, Nikals Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Oliver Twist, Weihnachtsgeschichten, Bleakhaus, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens ContainsIs retold inHas the adaptationDavid Copperfield [adapted ∙ Oxford Bookworms] by Clare West David Copperfield [adapted ∙ Penguin Reader] by Charles Dickens Classics Illustrated: David Copperfield by George Lipscomb David Copperfield [adapted ∙ Longman Strucural Readers] by Charles Dickens Is abridged inDavid Copperfield [adapted - Great Illustrated Classics] by Charles Dickens Best Loved Books for Young Readers 01 by Reader's Digest David Copperfield: Authoritative Modern Abridgement by Edmund Fuller by Charles Dickens David Copperfield [abridged by Charles Dickens] by Charles Dickens Has as a student's study guide
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Uriah Heep needs to be enrolled in an emergency self-esteem course.
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Pain comes to all, yes, even to Steerforth.