Hard Times
I read this for our online reading discussion group. Overall, I would say that the first two thirds was awful and the last third was somewhat better.
My biggest complaint about this book is that I found the characters neither interesting nor believable nor worthy of being cared about. This surprised me because (I gather) Dickens is known for his characterization. The characters felt like caricatures, almost like he was writing a morality play.
I haven't read Dickens since my teens and college years. I have vague but generally positive memories of his novels (with Bleak House being the one that sticks out most in m memory). I thought that I had read this one before but if so I have no memory of the story (although I did guess immediately that the old woman was Bounderby's mother, so perhaps I was unconsciously remembering that plot detail from a prior read).
Oddly enough, I have much more vivid memories of reading John Stuart Mill (against whose Utilitarianism this book is squarely aimed) than I do of the Dickens I read during that same period.
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Charles Dickens - Hard Times - 4
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