Tag Archives: Charles Dickens

Happy Holidays!

Late Last Night Books

12/17/2015 – Happy Holidays and the best to you in the New Year!

wreathe copyHoliday messages surround us. We hear of Hanukkah candles lighting the stand against oppression; the Christian carolers singing of peace and brotherhood; and the Kwanzaa message celebrating family, community, and culture. Muslim festivals are at other times of the year, but their message of celebration and good wishes also spring from the well of kindness, hope, and good cheer.

But the most powerful tool we have toward peace and a better world is the written word. As Martin Luther said, “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.”

Memories of Summertime Reading

Late Last Night Books

6/17/2015 – Memories of Summertime Reading

When I was a kid, summer days meant a blissful release from school, hours spent at the beach, and more hours under a tree, feeling the warm breezes and reading. I read everything that presented itself, often from the adult fiction shelves at our local library, but what I enjoyed most back then were the Nancy Drew mysteries.

Growing up in a time when women were admired for beauty rather than brains and limited to subservient roles, I felt pleased when the villain in a book or movie was a woman. Roles like that gave her power, made her interesting.

What Dickens Knew: The Importance of Character

Late Last Night Books

5438732/4/14  WHAT DICKENS KNEW: THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER

Near the beginning of Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, there is a delightful moment in which Mr. Watts tells his students that they will soon be meeting Mr. Charles Dickens of London, England. The students rarely see a white man in their isolated village in Papua New Guinea so they come back the next day with great expectations. Initially disappointed to learn the author has been dead for over a century, they quickly become enthralled as Mr. Watts starts reading Dickens’s last novel aloud.