We read Dickens’ famous Christmas tale aloud every year and this year is turning out especially fun. This morning, right when we got to the part where Marley’s ghost drags his chains up into Scrooge’s rooms from the wine cellar far below, our neighbor rapped loudly at the door. I jumped! Ha!
This is one of my favorites passages:
He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.
7 Comments
We have an advent calendar of sorts, in which all the days are mini books/ornaments summing up this story, and then the books get hung on the tree by their gold loop. I also have a copy of the book with a facsimile of Dicken’s actual manuscript on one page and the typed, published version on the other. It’s my favorite. 😀 I personally start reading the actual book about 2 weeks before Christmas (so starting next week). Plus my kids like watching the musical “Scrooge” with me, although they get bored by the Alistair Sims version. Oh yes, this is a well known story in our house! Right next to “The Gift of the Magi”.
I feel so ignorant! I did not even know there was a musical called Scrooge. Do you watch it on DVD? Can you give me a link, please? I might need to watch this; sounds good. 🙂
ps. Your book sounds amazing!
Brandy, how do you space out the chapters – do you read the book in December or start earlier??
I read it in December. Have you read it before? It’s a novella, so quite short. It’s divided into staves {like a carol}. This week, we read the first stave in two readings. Next week, we’ll read the next two staves, and then the last two staves the week after that. So far this has worked well. 🙂
I read it myself many years ago but I’ll have to keep it in mind as a read aloud for next year.
We read that part today!
I like that part too. I feel kind of sorry for that house that couldn’t find its way out.