Charles Dickens and My Great Expectations

It will soon be the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest English writers to live.
It will soon be about 200 months since I began to read Dickens' famous novel, Great Expectations, at the suggestion of a young friend who is now no longer quite so young.

Why, you might ask, has it taken me so long to read the book? There are all sorts of excuses: work, life, restarting it several times in order to refresh my memory, switching from my hectic daily life to the leisurely pace of nineteenth-century literature...but the best reason I can think of for my slowness can be found on page two of the book.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

When I first came to this passage, I stopped. I read it again. I'd never read prose like this, that was so utterly poetic, so filled with rhythm, and which created so evocative a scene. I read it aloud. I  copied it down and posted it above my desk. Later, I memorized it. This one snippet from a scene had grabbed me and so thoroughly mesmerized me that I've been reading that same passage over and over for the last 200 months.
That's my excuse for not finishing Great Expectations. 
What is your favorite Dickens' work? Why?

Book Voyeur on the #18

What's almost as good as seeing someone read one of your own books? Seeing them reading a book by someone you know!
This morning on the bus, I was seated across from three people reading books. First, a man with a thick sheaf of pages of a braille book held against his ample stomach, fingers rapidly dancing through the bumpy white text. Naturally, I couldn't read the title. Next to him, a small white-haired woman held a well-read copy of They Call Me Mother Graham by Morrow Coffey Graham, mother of the evangelist Billy Graham. And next to her, a young, hip-looking gal with leggings, short skirt, bracelets and piercings—her colorful hair sticking out in all directions—who was glued to a book whose cover I couldn't see. Of course, that just made me more curious.
When she at last shifted the book to her other hand, I got a glimpse of the cover. To my delight, it was not only a book I'd read and liked—Iron Lake, but it was by someone I knew—my colleague from Resort to Murder William Kent Krueger.
Ironically, I'd just seen Kent the night before at the launch for his new book Red Knife, which I'm looking forwards to reading. The young woman and I began talking. She confided that Iron Lake was the first book of Kent's she'd read, and she was really enjoying it.
"He's from around here, you know that?" I asked.
She nodded, and quickly ducked her head back down to the book, captivated.

BOOK RELEASE PARTY

Join the authors of Resort to Murder: Thirteen More Tales of Mystery Monday, September 24 at 7 pm, for a book release party at Once Upon a Crime, 604 West 26th Street, in Minneapolis. There will be a limited supply of books signed by all of the authors, so you need to contact the store if you want one.