What the Dickens?

Day 301 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and a bunch of television viewers will now be reading Dickens, because, as Border's tells us, it's the new Oprah Book Club pick.  Just in time for Christmas!

Evidently they will be reading A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, bound as one?  Or not?  I'm not sure, as when you click the Buy Now button, it says "no image available," but this image is available.

Anyhoo, Dickens is great fun.  And 'tis the season for Dickens, too.

Another list, the 2010 list from Lemon Hound.

Books inspired by Alice in Wonderland, via Chicago Sun-Times.

Ditto the source, books about Hanukkah, for kids.  (I also wrote about a vintage Hanukkah book at work today.)

A young woman got 33 books for her dad for Christmas, in the Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe mystery series.

And I just read Figure Studies, a book of poems by Claudia Emerson, because I need to return it to the person I borrowed it from.  Wonderful.  And I loved her books Pinion and Late Wife, too.  Figure Studies accomplishes a quiet feminism somehow, by examining life in a school for girls and speaking in a community voice--the "we" voice--in the "Gossips" section, which is not so gossipy as to lack compassion.  The epigraph for that section is from "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner, famous for its "we" voice.

Plus, this book mentions Atticus Finch in a poem!  My hero!  And Harper Lee in an epigraph, speaking as Dill: "I'm little but I'm old."