Happy Birthday, Dickens!

Today is Charles Dickens’ birthday!  The only Dickens book that I have ever read is A Christmas Carol (see my write-ups on that here and here).  I watched movies for David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist.  They were pretty entertaining movies.  I think of the manipulative spinster in Great Expectations; the abusive step-father and the slimy Uriah Heap in David Copperfield; the drunk who laid down his life for somebody else in Tale of Two Cities; and the story in Oliver Twist about an orphan who suffers poverty until he learns that he is part of a rich family.  Good heroes.  Villains who catch one’s attention.  Good stories.  I should probably read the books sometime, but I have a hard time with Dickens’ thick style.  I have been interested when people have told me that Dickens was a Christian, however.  And he apparently had strong beliefs, for he is a critic of Sabbatarianism in A Christmas Carol (see my links above).