A Christmas Carol

I, like I assume most people, know this story very well even though I have never actually read it. I'm honestly most familiar with it through Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Muppet Christmas Carol, which are both great! In fact, seeing The Muppet Christmas Carol with live music from the local symphony orchestra is what inspired me to finally read it.

And I loved it! I've always loved the structure of this story, it just feels like one of the classic basic archetypes of a story that hits on something interesting with every beat and doesn't have any fat on it. The quick character arc and morals expounded by his change are also very satisfying.

This Dickens guy has a pretty good way with words too, I'd say. I love a lot of the lines that are often quoted verbatim in adaptations (“A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!”, “If they would rather die, they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population”, “Come in! and know me better, man!”, etc). Each character, time period, and location is imbued with so much life and texture, and they all become very clear in my mind while reading it.

I actually listened to this via an audiobook that was narrated by Hugh Grant and made available for free through Audible, though it annoyingly had ads littered throughout as I don't have a subscription to Audible right now. It is a pretty short read as well, so I think I might try to revisit this one more often in the coming years, both in written form and audiobook, and of course as performed by Muppets.