Results tagged “Copperfield” from One Hour to Read

Finally, after 19 months, I have finished "David Copperfield." I had my doubts at first about how this would work, but I have to say it was quite enjoyable to read a novel in installments. I liked having a set group of characters I could check in on every month, although I think I would have preferred shorter weekly installments instead of having so much time between sections. It was easy to forget some of the minor characters, especially so in this final installment when so many were coming back for a final visit. There were a few I didn't even recognize, until I thumbed back through previous chapters.


After all that time, I really did savor the last section. Normally, when you get to the end of a book, you're racing through to the final page, either desperate to find out what happens or just to finish the book and move onto the next one. Here, I read slowly, not quite ready to let everyone go. I can't say I loved this book all the time. Some of the weird digressions could be maddening, but they worked much better when read over an extended period.

There were some great moments in these last chapters. Finally, Copperfield gets the (right) girl. We learn that Mr. Micawber actually finds success abroad. (Thank God for Australia, a country that like Mrs. Micawber can properly appreciate the interesting talents of one Wilkins Micawber.) And lovable Tommy Traddles finds happiness and even a modicum of his own success.

Traddles gets married and is now constantly surrounded by his wife's many sisters, prompting this telling observation, "The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but very delightful." Words to live by, indeed.

We even have a wonderful comeuppance chapter in which Copperfield tours a prison and -- Coincidentally! -- discovers that two villains of the book happen to be locked up there. It's a good thing David suddenly decided to tour a prison at the most climactic moment of the book, isn't it? Luckily, after some 800 pages, I came to enjoy these coincidences and accepted that all of Dickens' England is populated by about fifty people.

Finally, here just once is the way I would like to be greeted when I come back after a long trip. This is from Traddles when Copperfield visits him after three years away in Europe.

My dear fellow.... My dearest Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! . . . How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!

These days, such a speech is usually replaced by a "Dude, long time, no see!" Still, you have to admire such enthusiasm. In twenty years or so, when I pick up this book to reread, that's just how I expect I'll greet David Copperfield again.

After this, I have just one more month to go on David Copperfield. Strangely, after all the excitement of last month, this month's installment was a bit of a letdown. It was still entertaining and even quite dramatic at times, but Dickens also seems to be wrapping things up at this point

There is much here about the Micawbers getting ready to make their departure to Australia, along with Mr. Peggotty and Emily. However, both their storylines seem to have ended last month, and it feels like Dickens is just looking for a way to keep them in the book for a few more chapters.

However, he does resolve the storylines of both Ham and Steerforth in a thrilling and sad manner. Never to shy away from hyperbole, Dickens begins Chapter 55 this way:

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its forecast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.

Well, then, I figured this ought to be good. And it was an exciting chapter, but these characters don't seem quite important enough to warrant such a buildup. The events were awful and somewhat indelible, but not quite bound by an infinite variety of ties.... Sorry.  

I think I may just be grumpy because the book is ending soon. I've compared Copperfield to a long-running television show before, and I think there is a similar disappointment now that one of my favorite books is ending. A lot of the enjoyment of these characters is just to have them there; I don't necessarily want to see a concluding story arc for each one.

As with television shows, I wonder if there were readers at the time who said things like, "Yeah, I used to read Copperfield all the time, but it's really gone downhill since Chapter 33." Was there a moment when David Copperfield jumped the shark? We'll probably never know.

In the middle of this month's reading, I suddenly realized that I had made a miscalculation. The goal of this project was to read Copperfield as it was originally released. For the most part, the book was released in three-chapter installments each month, but there were a couple of months with extra chapters that I didn't notice. It turns out that I was two chapters behind, and so I had to read five chapters this month to catch up.

For that reason, and because I am nearing the end, a lot happened this month. Now, this is where I would normally put up a spoilers alert, but it's getting impossible to write about David Copperfield without revealing all that has happened. Read on at your own risk. There were three major resolutions this month.

Emily is found. Although I've never been enthralled with this particular subplot, I have to say this was one of the more dramatic chapters in the book. Dickens goes all out in this section, and he had me on the edge of my seat. I suppose my main problem with the Mr. Peggotty-Emily subplot is that it seems so peripheral to David's life. This is Dickens where the periphery is often more entertaining than the central parts of a book, but still this seemed a little too beside the point, especially since David's role in the search for Emily has been minimal.

Uriah Heep gets his comeuppance. And he does so in a very satisfying manner. I suppose one could make the argument that this is a peripheral story too. However, David is much more involved in the events, especially since Agnes has been one of Heep's victims. Besides, HEEP (as Mr. Micawber calls him) is an entertaining villain, so for the most part these sections are just fun.

Poor Dora passes away. It was obvious that this would be happening soon, and in a sad but short "retrospective" chapter at the end of this installment, David finally loses his "child-wife," as she called herself. I've never exactly liked Dora, but she really was one of the more entertaining caricatures in the book.

With all these resolutions and with just two installments left, I feel as if I am embarking on a whole new book.

The end is in sight, and there seems to be a resolution forming in the L'il Em'ly saga. Two whole chapters were devoted to that, and then in the last chapter (helpfully titled "Domestic") we gain some insight into David's home life. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of happy news there. David seems increasingly frustrated with his marriage, and then we also learn that Dora seems to be in bad health.

As I've made clear, I've never been a big fan of Dora, but I don't wish disease on her. I fear that we may end up losing Dora, and that David will end up marrying Agnes. I want to Dora to be out of the picture, but I don't want to be rooting for her demise. Perhaps a nice little divorce would be the solution, but of course we are in Victorian times, so consumption it'll probably have to be.

On the positive side of the ledger, it looks like next month's installment will start with a little excitement. Chapter 49 is titled "I am Involved in Mystery," and I can't wait. By the way, "I am Involved in Mystery" is something I definitely plan on stealing for an e-mail subject line, preferably one that is work-related.

Here's one major problem with reading a novel only three chapters at a time. One tends to forget about certain characters. I talked last month about my lack of interest in Mr. Peggotty. I feel the same way actually about Doctor Strong and his marriage, which are the focus of Chapter 45.

I confess that I wasn't all that interested in the Good Doctor when he first showed up, and so I don't really remember all the details about him when he periodically pops up. It's not that I mind the sections about him. It's just that I seemed to have sat his first chapter out, so to speak, and I have a lot of trouble remembering everything about him. I suppose it's somewhat understandable in that he was introduced to me sometime last May.

At any rate, the other chapters were enjoyable, as Copperfield has now grown up a bit. This section begins with a chapter called "Another Retrospect," which is a great technique that Dickens uses. Every once in a while, he gets bored of what he's writing and just forges ahead. In this case, David gets married, buys some property, and embarks upon a career all in just a few pages.

Dickens introduces this with the following passage:

Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me stand aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.

In modern day English, this translates directly to: "Wow, this next section is pretty boring, so let's just skip it, shall we? You were probably going to anyway."

One wonders if the previous month's edition hadn't sold all that well, and Dickens decided he had to switch things up a bit.

On the Dickens front, it has been a bit of a lackluster month. Usually, I read it right away, but for some reason I kept putting my Copperfield off this month. I had to rush this week to finish it before month 14 had ended.

Last month's installment was as good as any other, so I don't have an explanation for my lack of enthusiasm.

Perhaps the problem was that it started with a chapter on Mr. Peggotty updating David on his search for L'il Em'ly, a part of the novel I have no interest in. Luckily, after this was a chapter on the delightfully odd aunts of Dora followed by a chapter featuring the nasty Uriah Heep.

I flew through the last two chapters in about one night, while the first chapter (8 pages!) took me most of the month. I suppose the problem is that I have been using this as a bedtime reading, so when I ran into a slow patch it was always easier to turn the light out than just to plow on through it.

For some reason, I just love this passage:

"She had no other relations than two aunts ... who had not held any other than chance communication with their brother for many years. Not that they had ever quarreled ... but that having been, on the occasion of Dora's christening, invited to tea when they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they had expressed their opinion in writing that it was 'better for the happiness of all parties' that they should stay away. Since which they had gone their road, and their brother had gone his."

Isn't that wonderful? It seems such a very civilized way to have a feud. I wonder what the modern day equivalent is. "You know, it's really better for the happiness of all parties if you would just piss off."

At any rate, I wouldn't want to be the people who were not invited to tea. I can only imagine how aggrieved they must have felt.

This was one of my favorite months of Copperfield. It was full of all the most compelling characters. The humbly evil Uriah Heep was in this section, as was lovely Agnes Wickfield. (And I know Copperfield keeps saying that he thinks of Agnes almost as a sister, but Copperfield ought to wise up and ask her to marry him instead of the annoying Dora.) Dora, with her rich girl's life and her little yapping dog, for some reason, keeps reminding me of Paris Hilton. Minus the sex tape, of course, unless there's a blue side of Dickens that I don't know about.

Valuable insights like this, of course, are yet another reason why I never could have been an English major.

Din-witted, adorable, pampered Dora has a tough month. Her father dies, though to be honest she seems to show the most stress when Copperfield suggests that she learn how to cook because he might not have enough money to support her extravagant lifestyle. I may pick on Dora, but she has a great attitude to life.

"My love," said I, "I have work to do."

"But don't do it! returned Dora. "Why should you?"

It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.

"Oh, how ridiculous!" cried Dora.

"How shall we live without, Dora?" said I.

"How? Any how!" said Dora.

She seemed to think that she had quite settled the question, and gave me such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer for a fortune.

Oh, that Dora. I think she might be onto something.

One of my pet peeves is the phrase "in a word," mainly because it's so seldom followed by just one word. It's especially amusing when someone truly wordy uses it. Here's my favorite sentence of this month:

"In a word, although we took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into six pences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes."

Well, Dickens can be, in a word, verbose. 

That paragraph, incidentally, is about Mr. Dick, a wonderful character who is a bit of a simpleton who still manages to be insightful. Mr Dick is a constant companion to Copperfield's Aunt. Mr. Dick reminds me a little of Chauncey Gardiner. 

At one point, Mr. Dick moves into a room in which "there wasn't room to swing a cat," he doesn't seem to mind though:

You know, Trotwood [David Copperfield], I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me?

And he clearly has a point. Unlike Chauncey Gardiner, I don't expect Mr. Dick to become an important adviser to the Prime Minister, but who knows? I still have another 300 pages to go.

As in previous chapters, when David Copperfield falls in love, well, he really falls in love. For example:

I had loved her every minute, day, and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again, but no lover had ever loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.

So take that, lovers of the world! Your love is nothing, compared to that of David Copperfield. If he had lived in the 1980s rather than the 1880s, Dickens could have written some excellent power ballads.

Other things do happen in this section, including some intrigue with L'il Emily and Steerforth, but for me it is the chapter in which Copperfield gets engaged that is the most memorable. As they say in sports, Dickens really leaves it all on the page in this chapter.

Here's my favorite passage from this month, when David Copperfield returns to Yarmouth and sees the undertaker Mr. Omer:

"Why, bless my life and soul!" said Mr. Omer, "how do you find yourself? Take a seat. Smoke, not disagreeable, I hope?"

"By no means, " said I. "I like it -- in somebody else's pipe."

"What, not in your own, eh?" Mr. Omer returned, laughing. "All the better, Sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself, for the asthma."

Well, that's one method to combat asthma. It reminds me of those "More Doctors smoke Camels" commercials about cigarettes in the 1950s. Then again, in Mr. Omer's defense, with the pollution of Victorian England, maybe smoking a pipe was better than breathing the air. It's either coal smoke or tobacco smoke, I guess.

Much of this section takes place on the road, as Copperfield travels to see Steerforth at his home in Highgate and then travels to the seashore at Yarmouth to see Peggotty. (There is some serious vacation time in proctoring!) The scenes in Yarmouth are always entertaining because they seem so strange, what with some of the major characters living on boat that has been converted into a house.

I don't know why this is, but I imagine Yarmouth to be similar to the town of Sweethaven in Robert Altman's version of "Popeye." All the characters there seem so very odd, especially Little Em'ly and Cousin Ham.  In some strange way, these chapters seem like a vacation from the rest of the book.

At any rate, after ten months, I now seem to be more than halfway though the book. It's all smooth sailing from now, with only nine more installments left.  

It's a little disconcerting to realize that I'm on page 392 of this book which I started nine months ago, and I'm not even halfway though the thing. It may be that this three chapters per month policy isn't the greatest idea, after all. Perhaps there is a reason why books are not serialized as often these days.

Again, there are only about twenty or so people in Dickensian England, and David Copperfield keeps running into them all. As always, there are many blasts from the past in this section, but it's always entertaining to see all these characters keep coming back.

The highlight here is that Copperfield falls in love. Here's how he describes meeting the lovely Dora Spenlow for the first time:

All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!

She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was -- anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink -- no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.

You know, I think he might just like her.

I learned a new word this month: dissipation. That's because the title of Chapter 24 is "My First Dissipation,"  and to me the word sounded vaguely like a legal term.

Now, this came right after a chapter in which Copperfield decided to choose a profession. By the way, it turns out this profession-choosing wasn't all the difficult back then. Copperfield's aunt suggested he should become a proctor, and after minimal thought Copperfield decided that he liked the idea "exceedingly." No worries about what color his parachute is, Copperfield is quite content to be a proctor, even if he didn't quite know what it was before then.

I wasn't entirely sure what a proctor was either, though when I looked it up, I discovered that it was a type of solicitor in Victorian times. And so when the next chapter title included the word "dissipation," I assumed this was just some sort of legal phrase and didn't bother looking it up. This was a mistake.

I soon learned that it actually means roughly "a bender." To adopt a decidedly non-Dickensian phrase, this is the chapter in which David Copperfield gets wasted. Wicked wasted. Perhaps even exceedingly wasted.

While a drunken Copperfield disturbs a play with his loud talk, Dickens has this wonderful description of drunkenness: "The whole building looked as if it were learning to swim, it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner when I tried to steady it."

Eventually, Copperfield wakes up with a monstrous hangover, or as Dickens writes, "But the agony of my mind, the remorse and shame I felt when I became conscious the next day!" In this one chapter, Copperfield seems to experience everything about drinking excess, except the throwing up, which disappointed me a bit. I was really curious to see what Dickensian turn of phrase would be used to describe that.

19th Century England was a big place, and yet David Copperfield keeps running into people purely by accident. It's amazing. Seriously, if David Copperfield were around today, he'd be running into his 10th grade geometry teacher every time he went to the mall. "I say, Mr. Bloom, whatever are you doing in The Gap!"

This book is set in a wonderful, random world where all sorts of characters from the past just show up. "My God, it's Little Copperfield. I haven't seen you since Chapter 7, and here we are in Chapter 19. Look at you, you're all grown up."

I've come to the conclusion that David himself isn't the most interesting character. The excitement in this book comes from the other characters, so it's nice that the entertaining ones keep coming back. You can sometimes tell that this was written in installments. I can almost imagine Dickens saying to himself, "Well, he was a popular character. I think I'll bring him back for another chapter." 

Actually, it's fine that David isn't always interesting. He doesn't need to be. If Copperfield himself were wild and wacky, the other characters wouldn't seem nearly as intriguing. On the back of my nineteen-cent copy of this book, Dickens says that this was his favorite of all his novels, and I suspect this is because he got to create so many interesting characters here.

Despite this, these three chapters went slower for me than other chapters. I find I don't like the mostly adult Copperfield as much as the child Copperfield, and I'm starting to wonder if the book is going anywhere at all. Then again, maybe that's genius on the part of Dickens. Copperfield is suddenly nineteen-years-old, his character is getting a bit annoying, and the book of his life seems aimless. That makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Perhaps it's a good thing that Dickens skipped over the adolescent years, because that would have been really tough to read. "Chapter 16: The Girls Tell Me I Look Good With a Mullet, and so I Run With It."

This part has perhaps the most accurate chapter title I have ever seen. Chapter 17 is titled "Somebody Turns Up." I don't want to give away any plot spoilers here, but let's just say that Dickens doesn't disappoint at all. Indeed, somebody does turn up. It reminds me of Joseph Heller's Something Happened, another accurate title, although some could argue that not a whole lot really did happen in that book. But in chapter 17 fear not. Somebody definitely turns up.

This section feels like an ending, and it seems that a new book is about to begin. By the end of the last chapter, Copperfield is suddenly seventeen-years-old, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. When my father read this to me as a child, I think we only made it a few chapters into the book. I believe I read this as a teenager, but I don't really remember any of it. In fact, I may not have finished it. At any rate, I always thought that this was a novel of childhood, and so I'm a little excited that I'll get to read about a relatively adult David Copperfield.

This month, I learned that there is a movie version of the book coming out next year. I happen to know that Simon Pegg is in the movie, but I'm trying my best not to learn who else is in it. I don't want to end up seeing some actor in my head whenever I read about a character. I remember reading "All the King's Men" a few years back when the film version came out, and unfortunately Sean Penn was on the cover of my book. And so whenever Willie Stark was speaking, I kept imagining Sean Penn in the role. This was nothing if not annoying. I try my best to avoid Sean Penn movies, so I didn't really want to see him playing a role in my head too. I don't think Sean Penn is in the Copperfield movie, but I wouldn't put it past him.

During these six months, I've been reading this slowly as bedtime reading, and it's well-suited to that. That's how I read the Harry Potter books, and this is really the first book I've read since then that works as well as bedtime reading. I suppose that's fitting, considering that's how my father used the book.

In some ways, Rowling reminds me a little of Dickens. They both include many characters who border on caricature but are interesting nonetheless. And both the Potter novels and David Copperfield are easy books to jump into, even if only for a few pages at a time. With both, there are, of course, dangers that you'll get engrossed in the plot and stay up half the night reading. Luckily, I have the strict three-chapter-a-month limit to hold me back here, something I probably could have used back when I was reading Potter.

At any rate, I can't wait for next month, when I get to read Chapter 19: "I Look about Me and Make a Discovery." I bet there will be some serious looking about and discovery-making in that chapter!

This will be a short entry. I think I should probably get away from revealing the plot in these posts. Suffice it to say, that this was a better month for David. Things were awful at first, but by the end he's back to a nicer life with a whole new cast of characters. It's amazing how quickly this book moves. Young David has more experiences before age 10 than most characters have during their whole lives.

I'm actually a little surprised that there aren't more cliffhangers. When I found out that this book was released in three-chapter installments every month, I expected that every three chapters would end on some sort of cliffhanger. ("WIll Davy be eaten by giant sea llamas? Check back next month.") Dickens, though, doesn't usually resort to that. And the book is good enough that you don't need a cliffhanger to keep coming back.

The highlight of this section is the introduction of the miserable Uriah Heep, he of the clammy hand. "It was such an uncomfortable hand that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory." Some phrases used to describe Uriah, who I'm sure we'll hear more from: "cavernous face," "high shouldered and bony," "hardly any eyebrows," and "long, lank skeleton hand." Some complain that Dickens deals in caricatures rather than characters, but he does it so well, who cares?

This might be where I would have started to lose steam, if I was reading Copperfield all at once. I didn't mind these chapters, but I did lose some enthusiasm. Maybe it's because David's life takes another turn for the worse. Here, David is sent away by his stepfather to work in a London factory. And then the father of the family he stays with, the Micawbers, gets sent to the poor house for not paying his bills. Happy times, these are not.

And yet, despite all the problems, David still seems to be such an agreeable chap. Maybe it's because he's only ten-years-old, but he seems so curious about everything. It's a charming characteristic, but also a little amazing. He goes from living a middle class life to being a child laborer. He's upset, of course, but he never quite loses his wonder.

Finally, this part does at least have the best chapter title so far: "I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don't Like It." I think anyone who has made it into their twenties can relate.

This section starts with David's time at school, followed by his holidays at home, and then the last chapter is titled, "I have a memorable birthday." Well, that's sure to be a good time -- A whole chapter about a birthday! What fun! Except that two pages into the chapter we learn that David's mother has just died. Well, I guess Mas'r Davy's not going to get the new Gameboy for his birthday, after all.

When I started reading this, I was worried about the chapter headings. I tend not to want to know what's going to happen in future pages, and so I always avoid reading future chapter titles and try as best to avoid reading the blurbs on the back of the book. Going into this, I knew that his mother was going to die, but I didn't want to know when it happened. Well, surely, it wouldn't happen in the Memorable Birthday chapter, and so I wasn't at all prepared. Stupid Dickens.

Then again, the title of chapter seven is: "My First 'Half' at Salem School." The fact that Dickens put the word "Half" in quotes should have warned me that Davy wasn't going to make it back there.

Of all, the "My Holidays" chapter is perhaps the most enjoyable. There, David gets one last evening with Peggotty and his mother (and new brother). It's like a little gift before the Murdstones show up and ruin all the fun, as they are wont to do.

So for all those readers out there whose mothers might have remarried a brute, here's a word of advice: Biting your evil stepfather is not the solution. This could lead you to an English boarding school where things will only get worse. Or at least they'll seem like they'll get worse.

However, in this case, it is almost as if the nasty boarding school is a better place for him than at home with the Murdstones. (Mr. Murdstone has now invited his sister Miss Murdstone to live with them all and make everything just a little more miserable.) Granted, the "Take care of him. He bites" sign that Davy is forced to wear at school is a bit much.

Despite the misery, these chapters are enjoyable, full of interesting characters. My favorite is the wonderful waiter on the train ride to the school in London who somehow manages to convince Davy that he, the waiter, should eat all of Davy's dinner. I also like the names Dickens uses. Mr. Murdstone just sounds like an evil stepfather, and Mr. Creakle just sounds like an old, nasty schoolmaster.

Finally, I've figured out who I want to play Mr. Murdstone, Daniel Day-Lewis. I don't usually do this, but whenever Mr. Murdstone shows up, I can't help imagining Day-Lewis. I don't even really like Day-Lewis; he's a fine actor, but he gets on my nerves. Still, he's the only actor I can think of who could do justice to such an annoying character. I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not.

Good news. I'm actually enjoying the book. To be honest, I was slightly afraid that I wouldn't, which would have made this a rather gruesome 19-month experiment. So far, though, it's enjoyable, and reading Dickens in small installments does bring out some of his finer qualities. Let's face it. The man meanders, but that's not a bad thing. He seems to create characters for the sole purpose of amusing himself. And when you only have to read 40 pages at a time, this is kind of fun.

After we learn about David's family for the first two chapters,  most of the third chapter takes place with the family of Peggotty, the family houskeeper. Will any of these characters show up again? I expect Little Em'ly will, but I'm not so sure about the others. Does it matter if they don't show up again? Not really. And, most important of all, wouldn't it be cool to live in a house shaped like a boat like the Peggottys?

I wondered if there would be a cliffhanger at the end of every third chapter to keep readers coming back. There is sort of in this one. When Davy comes back from Peggotty's family, he suddenly finds out that his mother has married Mr. Murdstone, who is about as convincing an evil stepfather as one can have. On the last page of the installment, he learns that this disagreeable man is now his new father, that his room has been moved far away from his mother, and finally that a big angry dog is jumping after him. I see that the next chapter is called "I Fall into Disgrace," so it doesn't appear that things will be getting any better either.

I used to love Dickens when I was a teenager, but then in college I took a Victorian Literature course and was assigned to read the 800+ page Pickwick Papers in one week. I never came close to finishing it, and at the point I was officially Done With Dickens.

Over that week, I tried my best to get through it, but as the deadline approached, I started speed reading, and then skimming, and eventually just skipping whole sections. Here's the problem with Dickens. Once you decide only to read the important parts, you're soon left with nothing. There are so many fun characters in David Copperfield, but are really many of them that necessary? No, some are just entertaining. A few feel like they are out of some "Kids in the Hall" sketch. But it's tough to figure this all out when you need to read 800 pages in a week. "O my eye," as one of his characters likes to exclaim.

When Dickens released "David Copperfield" in 1849, he released it in 19 monthly installments, each costing one shilling. Each month, another three chapters came out, until the very last month when a whopping six chapter installment came out. (It's sort of like how the final Seinfeld ended up being an hour instead of a half hour.)

And so here begins an experiment where I read David Copperfield the way it was intended. Each month, I'll read three chapters and only three chapters. I want to experience Dickens the way his first readers did. I want the chance to savor all the strange characters. I want the suspense of having to wait until the start of the next month between cliffhangers. And I want the chance to read Dickens as entertainment, not as some dusty literary classic.

I chose "David Copperfield," for a number of reasons, but mainly because my father tried to read it to me when I was young. I think he only made it through about 100 pages, but that's probably 100 more pages of Dickens than any other parent managed to read to their kids. I recently found the slightly-beat up copy from which he used to read to me. The list price was 75 cents, but my father -- always on the lookout for a bargain -- managed to find it at Barnes and Noble for a whopping 19 cents.

Of course, this project won't be easy. While reading a Dickens novel in just one week is daunting, it's equally daunting to start a novel that you know you won't finish until the summer of 2009.