It was a good read. The only hope we have is Jesus.What did you think about it? Is there any hope for us?
What books, if any are you reading, or have you read in the past year
- Thread starter Bob Jones V
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I read all 3 in 2 years. Fantastic.
I'm reading "The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God" By Carson, 
Happiness: cLASSICAL AND COMTEMPORARY READINGS
Happiness: cLASSICAL AND COMTEMPORARY READINGS
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Soldiers' Pay was meh. His first novel, not one of his best. No As I Lay Dying, anyway.
I was specifically referencing this book:
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I'll get there in a few months or a year. I've got about a year's worth of books listed that I want to read, and it includes selections not only from Faulkner, but Hemingway and Steinbeck as well as more commercial stuff like Tom Clancy and Patrick O'Brian. And when I read through an author's works, I like to do it in chronological order.
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OK, here's a question for readers:
Despite an English degree, of Charles Dickens, I've only read A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House.
I have a "2026 reading challenge" on my list this year from G3 Ministries that includes a Dickens novel. These are the ones that are most broadly considered his greatest novels:
Which one should I make a point of reading first, and why? (I'll get to all of them, eventually.)
Despite an English degree, of Charles Dickens, I've only read A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House.
I have a "2026 reading challenge" on my list this year from G3 Ministries that includes a Dickens novel. These are the ones that are most broadly considered his greatest novels:
- Great Expectations
- David Copperfield
- A Tale of Two Cities
Which one should I make a point of reading first, and why? (I'll get to all of them, eventually.)
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I recommend "Barnaby Rudge." It is a terrifying tale by Dickens about the Lord Gordon riots in London in 1780. This would be good cautionary reading for anyone who is inclined to support, or make excuses for, any sort of left-wing or right-wing rioting or insurrections nowadays (Black Lives Matter/George Floyd, Antifa, anti-ICE, Proud Boys, January 6 Capitol riots, whatever).
Of the three, I only recall reading A Tale of Two Cities, so I’d have to vote for it. All three are highly acclaimed, so I guess I should read them as well.
Mine is wading thru
A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life Dr Joel beeke
A tale of two cities. I'veread them all and that one is, IMHO the best.
was it true Dickins did not leave his children much in monies, but the message of jesus instead?
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No. Dickens was worth the equivalent of about 10 million modern US dollars when he died. He bequeathed the equivalent of $1 million to both his sons, an annual allowance for his wife, and a generous payment to each of the servants in his employment when he died.
Whether he left them the message of Jesus or not I couldn't say. He had written a Life of Our Lord for his children that he read to them every Christmas, and which remained unpublished during his lifetime, at his request. Like Dickens's Christianity, his life of Jesus was moralistic and practical rather than theological. Dickens was a bit of a liberal Anglican with Unitarian leanings.
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Books this month:
The Far Side of the World, Patrick O'Brian
Terminal Velocoity , M. P. Woodward (Tom Clancy spinoff)
Hay Fever, Noël Coward
Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel
Currently on the nightstand is Mosquitoes by William Faulkner.
The Far Side of the World, Patrick O'Brian
Terminal Velocoity , M. P. Woodward (Tom Clancy spinoff)
Hay Fever, Noël Coward
Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel
Currently on the nightstand is Mosquitoes by William Faulkner.
he sounds more like a Jefferson, who took the NT and took out o it all Jesus miracles and just kept his morals
Going thru Mark Ward's Authorized: the Use and Misuse of the King James Bible
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Not exactly. He leaned Unitarian sometimes because he had doubts about the Trinity, supposedly. But he believed firmly in Jesus's miracles and the Resurrection--the very things Jefferson cut out of his Bible.
Thomas Jefferson was a confirmed skeptic, but I prefer to think of Charles Dickens as a sincere believer, albeit a latitudinarian ("big-tent") Anglican with some weak theological leanings. Nothing too unusual for the Victorian era.
Charles Spurgeon and Dickens were contemporaries, about 20 years apart in age. loved Dickens's novels and owned a complete set, though he was critical of Dickens's portrayal of religious figures in his stories (Dickens was a nominal Anglican but opposed to organized religion, and didn't like Nonconformists, of which the Baptist Spurgeon was one, or the evangelical "Low Church" wing of the C. of E.). But they had common ground in their concern for the poor and other social issues.
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