Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

First of all - no picture for this book right away because I am in Prague and the internet connection isn't quite good enough to search for and attach a photo. But - this book is interesting to say the least. Charles Dickens is an amazing writer, as I'm sure you all know, and has a very magical way with words. His sentences flow and her can use the most bizarre words and have them make complete sense. It is amazing. It made reading the book much more enjoyable, because if you love writing, you usually enjoy being able to appreciate someone who does such a fantastic job at it.

However, the plot is boring up until the very end of the book. Unfortunately, the beginning of the book is important to pay attention to, or else the end of the book is not entertaining. You see, these random fact and happenings that happened in the beginning of the book turn into a hilarious bout of literary irony in the last 70 pages. I slowly read through this book until the end, when everything FINALLY pulled together and made sense.

While reading the book, I often asked myself why Dickens had added this character when they disappeared so soon after he added them. Luckily, they all came back in the end to add to the irony, but you often had forgotten who everyone was by that point and so I'm positive that some of the humor was lost on my lack of short-term memory.

Another slight problem about this book that the end - while ironic and humorous - was COMPLETELY predictable. As soon as something happened you were sort of like, 'Oh, I totally bet that she will fall in love with him." or "It's so obvious that this guy robbed the bank." And then at the end, you got the satisfaction of knowing that you were right! Ego boost, yes. Enhancing the plot, no.

I usually like to give a slight summary of the plot here, but to be honest, I'm still not totally sure what I read. I know the book is about the terrible nature of our world changing into an industrialist style, and so at least it has a message that it carries out. However, the way it accomplishes this is confusing and anti-climatic. Perhaps this is to help enhance the idea of how terrible this sort of lifestyle would truly be.

All in all I give this book 1.5 STARS OUT OF A POSSIBLE 5. Fabulous writing style with an extended vocabulary and a humorous ending. However, the irony of the ending was completely predictable and the rest of the plot was too boring for this to help.

Reading Next: The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton