Hard Times

I adored it. Dickens' fluid flowery descriptions and repeating motifs (smoke-serpents & melancholy mad elephants) really struck me, and held my attention throughout. I felt everything he asked me to feel - fury, pity, horror, wonder - and joy that I did not grow up under Gradgrind, so that I can and may feel those things. 

“... and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.”