Megan, that's it exactly. I want to believe the tiger story. And I'm thinking maybe that was the point.

I liked breaking a bone in my hand better than Ethan Frome. In fact, the only experiences in my life that I liked less than Ethan Frome were a ruptured ovarian cyst, moving and chemotherapy.

So the question is, why do all the schools make us read it??

Also, I want to have a talk with the first person who put Bartleby the Scrivener into the curriculum.

I'm currently reading Hard Times, and sometimes I forget in Dickens's customary frothiness and overdone-ness that he can sometimes luck himself into great hushed pointful prose. The introduction would have me believe that because Hard Times is so short, it's got a lot more of said pointful prose; unfortunately so far this means there are also no characters I particularly like. Maybe Louisa Bounderby, except she desperately needs to murder her husband (or run away with some factory worker) and I don't think Dickens will allow her a happy ending if she does.

Then again, book called Hard Times.

I read EF in highschool, I don't remember hating it , and now I don't remember anything about it, except there was a man, a woman and it was winter.

So the question is, why do all the schools make us read it??

Misery loves company?

Also, I want to have a talk with the first person who put Bartleby the Scrivener into the curriculum.

Hm, I rather like old Bartleby, but I always read and enjoyed that as a precursor to Camus and the like.

Bartleby makes me laugh out of sheer frustration, in that What About Bob? kind of way.

I remember reading Hard Times in high school, and I might even still have it on my shelves, but Dickens is such hard slogging for me.

Is Hard Times the one where one of the character's father is The Aged P? And he (Aged P) is hard of hearing, so the son rigged up a system of little signs that would pop out of the stonework around the fireplace? Or is that another Dickens?

That's Great Expectations, Steph.

I haven't read any Dickens in over 15 years, so I'm not surprised I've conflated them.

I loved the Aged P! He's such a minor character, but it's a nice detail. And is yet another example of Dickens and his fetish for cold bosses with wonderfully nice clerks. (Dickens was a clerk, in his youth.)

I saw a miniseries version of Great Expectations when I was about 12 with Anthony Hopkins as Abel Magwitch and John Rhys-Davies as Joe Gargery. (I didn't know really who these people were at the time, but in the years since JRD has always been Joe Gargery in my head.) In that version, the Aged P. lived in a colorful garden full of pinwheels. I haven't seen that version in 16 years, but it's still vivid in my mind.

And I'm thinking maybe that was the point.

I think you're right there Hil. Sometimes the fantastical is much better than fact.