19th Century Epic Romances discussion

This discussion is to discuss A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Part 1- Chapters 1-3.

I've never read Dickens, aside from "A Christmas Carol". I feel this book is more work for me to read, but I am learning something from it.
I know I will be exposing my ignorance, but I never realized that "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.." and "It is a far, far better thing that I do..." quotes came from this book!

I think it is interesting that Charles Dickens seeks to make money and educate people about the French Revolution at the same time by entertaining them with affordable segments of a gothic type cliff hanger.

I had a hard time with these 3 chapters. I found a site with chapter summaries (and other info) and I read the summaries after reading the chapters. It's been helpful. This is not my favorite Dickens, but I'm enjoying it now. Am about a 1/3 through it.

Boy, the start of this book is hard! I completely understand where you are coming from. I was slogging through the first chapters trying to figure out what was going on. I do feel that it is getting easier, as now I am on Chapter 11 of book 2. I'm sorry I haven't commented much! My book copy has fantastic notes in it and I also have the Cliff's Notes book, which gives a lot of background info.
(I also should say, this is my second time reading it, but the first was so long ago and I think I understand it less then!)

Tell me about the hard start! I've tried to start and given up on this book innumerable times. But I finally managed to read beyond the first 4 chapters, and I was hooked. Was a fantastic read.

I'm listening to A Tale of Two Cities on CD during my daily commute. The narrator is quite good, and I often listen to the same CD more than once because I can't stop in the middle of freeway traffic and change to the next CD.

Ok, now I know why our eyes glazed over and our brains froze as sixteen-year olds trying to read this! It's like literature boot camp for high schoolers.
The first chapter was a slog and the rather constant endnote asterisks in my edition made it even more like a lesson instead of a read.
I'm not sure I'll stay the course. I'm not sure I'm in a full Dickens mood. But I'm glad to know the consensus is that it's a rough start. Some books just are. It's challenging to lay out the opening setting and at the same time keep your readers engaged.

All I know is that I don't want to read Dickens, or something like it, for a very long time -
I felt as if I was working on an assignment and had a goal to achieve, rather than reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

I absolutely loved chapter 3, the Night Shadows. Loved it! I listened to it over and over and over again on CD.

Yes, Dickens is a slow mover (I always tried to avoid him when teaching English lit) you can try reading the first two lines of a paragraph and skipping the rest, looking for moments of 'high relief'. By coincidence, I am watching the 1980 film version with Peter Cushing. The English actors make rather odd revolutionaries!

I started reading this last night, and found this group by chance this afternoon so I thought I'd join the discussion since it still seems ongoing.

I also had a hard time at the start and went to sparknotes to get me through the first few chapters. That was humbling, since I'm an English lit major and a big James Joyce fan, and I felt a bit dim.

But once I got into it, it's pure poetry like the third chapter mentioned here. I could hardly believe it was the same author who wrote Copperfield and Great Expectations, both of which bored me nearly to tears. I loved Pickwick Papers though and I'm glad I didn't give up on Dickens and went for this.

I've read that Dickens understood the French people's complaints in rising up against their masters, but that he was critical of the violence. Since I believe that not all revolutions can be peaceful, his bias has got me a bit worried but I'm sure it won't dampen my enjoyment of this novel too much.

I've heard that a lot of Dickens's works were released as serials back in his day, so I imagine if this was entertainment back in the day, it was probably pretty exciting stuff. No way his meandering sentences could compete today with our I WANT IT ALL RIGHT NOW world. It forces you to slow way down.

Not Dickens' best book, to me (Bleak House is my favorite--an endless treasurebox of characters and ideas)--I've wondered if maybe the strange flatness of Two Cities is because it was written at a time when his life was being torn apart by his love for Ellen.

But Dickens at his worst is better than most contemporary writers at their best.

Shelley
http://dustbowlstory.wordpress.com