bookshelves of doom

Sydney Carton and the Slingshot of Doom.

I kid you not.

I give you:  A Tale of Two Cities FAN FICTION!!!

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapters 13-15

Chapter Thirteen:  Fifty-Two
In which Darnay and Carton meet for the last time.

• While I've never particularly taken to Charles Darnay, the passage about him coming to terms with his situation and his impending death really got me:

Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him.  Next the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude.  So, by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.

The bit about 'quiet fortitude' reminded me of the end of Angels with Dirty Faces, except, of course, reversed.  (Because Jimmy Cagney went to his execution screaming so that he wouldn't be a hero to the kids.  What?  You haven't seen it?  REALLY?)

• And I do appreciate that it isn't just Lucie that everyone wants to protect, but also (and maybe even more so) Doctor Manette.
• "He never thought of Carton.  His mind was so full of the others, that he never once thought of him."  Oh, man.  He's going to feel like a jerk.  Wow.
• Carton is there.
• And he is switching clothes with Darnay. 
• Darnay is understandably shocked and confused.  "The prisoner was like a young child in his hands."
• Sniffle.  The note that Carton dictates to Darnay.  Oh, waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.  Why did I want to read this book????
• Wow.  And Carton just totally drugged Darnay.  He was right, though, he wouldn't have been able to make this work otherwise because Darnay would have argued.
• Barsad has a couple of jailers carry Darnay (dressed as Carton) out, and Carton is now in Darnay's cell, alone.  Sniffle.
• Carton does love the weak and pitiable ladies.
• Okay, I'm full-on sobbing now:

As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment.  he pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.

"Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

"And his wife and child.  Hush!  Yes."

"O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"

"Hush!  Yes, my poor sister; to the last."

• And Mr. Jarvis Lorry, Lucie, little Lucie and Darnay are on their way out of France.  (What happened to Cruncher and Miss Pross?)

Chapter Fourteen:  The Knitting Done
In which we enjoy The Showdown to End All Showdowns.

• And now Madame Defarge has revealed that she wants Lucie and little Lucie to be executed.
• Jacques Three continues to be yicky:

"She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three.  "I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up."  Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.

• I do think that Madame Defarge's affection for her husband is affecting her actions -- if she suspected anyone else of thinking about warning Lucie & Co., she'd want them executed as well...
• And the wood-sawyer is ready to testify against Lucie...
• The Vengeance is like a cross between Gollum and a harpy.
• Whoa.  Madame Defarge just handed her knitting off to The Vengeance.  That, combined with the chapter title... is something going to happen to Madame Defarge???
• Oh, here are Miss Pross and Jerry.  Oh my good god, is there about to be a Pross/Defarge/Cruncher showdown???
• Ha ha ha:

"First," said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, "them poor things well out o' this, never no more will I do it, never no more!"

"I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher," returned Miss Pross, 'that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is."

Oh, I love them both.

• Oh.  Not Jerry's gone out to tell the coach to meet Miss Pross at the cathedral instead... leaving Miss Pross ALL ALONE.
• AND NOW MADAME DEFARGE IS THERE!!!
• "Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant."
• "I little thought," said Miss Pross, "that I should ever want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it."  I love that she's so practical that she makes the "except the clothes I wear" exception.  Hee.
• NO WAY!!!!  Go, Miss Pross.  That was an excellent showdown, but ultimately, a very quick end for a character as formidable as Madame Defarge.
• Oh.  And Miss Pross has lost her hearing forever.

Chapter Fifteen:  The Footsteps Die Out for Ever
In which I took no notes because I was too busy sobbing.

• Sydney Carton's last thoughts:

"I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.

"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place-- then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement --and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16
Book the Second, Chapters 17-20
Book the Second, Chapters 21-24
Book the Third, Chapters 1-4
Book the Third, Chapters 5-8
Book the Third, Chapters 9-12

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapters 9-12

Chapter Nine:  The Game Made
In which Mr. Lorry sees Sydney's good side, Sydney goes for a midnight ramble and Darnay's second trial begins.

• Ha ha ha.  I forgot that Jerry's grave-robbing might disturb my darling Mr. Lorry:

...Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust.  That honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of his hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.

I'm glad to know that pretending to inspect one's fingernails goes back so far.  I find that hilarious for some reason.

• So Sydney has fixed it so he can get access (through Barsad/Solomon/spy-face) to Darnay IF this new trial goes badly.  I'm starting to think that Mr. Charles Dickens and I will NOT be friends by the end of this book.
• And he's totally making Sydney more and more likable.  Grrr.  This almost choked me up:

"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered voice.  "Forgive me if I notice that you are affected.  I could not see my father weep, and sit by, careless.  And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you were my father.  You are free from that misfortune, however."

Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for.

• Oh, wow.  I hadn't even thought of the suicide-before-execution option.
• Okay, I know I need to Let This Go, but what is it about Miss Manette that inspires these men????  Sydney just let out a "long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob".
• Jebus.  I can't take this.  I AM getting choked up.  Dickens, you jerk:

It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of negligence than defiance.  It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road and saw its end.

• And now, the trial.  The Defarges were two of the people who denounced Darnay... and DOCTOR MANETTE was the third!!  How could that be -- even he himself doesn't know!!  Somehow I think it has something to do with whatever Defarge was looking for a the Bastille...
• "I defy that bell!"  Ha ha.  Thank goodness for The Vengeance.  She bumped me right out of my Sydney-Carton-induced funk.
• Jacques Three is a very unattractive character.
• And Defarge DID find a paper in the cell.  But we will only find out what it says in the next chapter.  (If this had been the end of an installment in the original, I would have wanted to strangle the author.)

Chapter Ten:  The Substance of the Shadow
In which we finally find out why Doctor Manette was imprisoned.

• And, of course, the verdict is death.  (Because Charles (who was two at the time) must CLEARLY pay for the sins of his father and uncle.)
• PS.  No, I'm not going to tell you why he was imprisoned.  What do you think this is, Cliff's Notes?  Sheesh.  Read it yourself.

Chapter Eleven:  Dusk
In which Lucie faints like a champ.

• Gosh.  Lucie hasn't even swooned yet.  She is being Strong for her Man.
• Doctor Manette tries to kneel and ask forgiveness, but Darnay won't hear of it:

"No, no!  What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us!  We know now, what a struggle you made of old.  We know now, what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it.  We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake.  We thank you with all out hearts, and all out love and duty!  Heaven be with you!"

• The second Darnay leaves the room, of course, Lucie faints all over the place.
• And then Sydney swoops in and picks her up.  (He's very proud of her.  Blecch.)
• And, LOOK!  Lucie Junior speaks!:

"Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!" cried little Lucie, springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief.  "Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to save papa!  O, look at her, dear Carton!  Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so?"

Straight out of Days.  I swear.

• Doctor Manette is going to try and get the conviction overturned, but Mr. Lorry and Sydney know that it's a lost cause.  I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE PLANNING, SYDNEY!  DON'T DO IT!!

Chapter Twelve:  Darkness
In which we learn that Madame Defarge is in this for more than her ideals.

• Sydney very deliberately goes to the wine shop, because "it is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here".  Sob.
• Madame Defarge notes the uncanny resemblance immediately.
• Nice:

"It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three.  "Why stop?  There is great force in that.  Why stop?"

"Well, well," reasoned Defarge, "but one must stop somewhere.  After all, the question is still where?"

"At extermination," said madame.

• Wait.  So Madame Defarge is literallythe sister of the woman destroyed by the Evremonde brothers?  Not just metaphorically?  So this is personal revenge?  Huh.  I did NOT see that coming.  "Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me."  That is a FANTASTIC line.
• Awww, no!  Doctor Manette is looking for his shoemaker's bench again.  My heart just broke a little.
• Carton just gave his identity papers to Mr. Lorry.  And then made Mr. Lorry swear to follow his instructions -- to secretly get everything and everyone ready to leave Paris, to "wait for nothing but to have my [Carton's] place occupied, and then for England!"  Sob.  Sob sob sob sob sob.
• This book doesn't, like, secretly have a happy ending, does it?  Because I'd be okay with that.

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16
Book the Second, Chapters 17-20
Book the Second, Chapters 21-24
Book the Third, Chapters 1-4
Book the Third, Chapters 5-8

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapters 5-8

Chapter Five:  The Wood-Sawyer
In which Lucie manages to keep herself very busy AND YET, stand around a whole lot.

• "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death;--the last, much the easier to bestow, O Guillotine!"
• Ah, good.  Lucie is keeping herself busy and useful, by arranging the household and tutoring little Lucie.  She's also set aside Darnay's chair and books -- does that mean his stuff from England?  Did they show up with LUGGAGE?  How on earth did she go about making travel arrangements?  I am envious of her skillz.
• So is the wood-sawyer the same mender of roads?  And if he knows that Lucie is there to "visit" her husband in prison, is that going to cause trouble?  Apparently not.
• I haven't mentioned it for quite a while (as I've been so caught up in the story), but all along, Dickens' description has continued to provide & create such fantastic, clear images for me.  He really is great for that.  I can see everything.
• I suspect that the Carmagnole scene has been dissected in many a high school English class. 
• Madame Defarge appears right after Lucie blows a kiss to the prison window -- UH OH.
• And who could that be with Mr. Lorry?  Could it possibly be Sydney Carton??  He saved Darney at his first trial, after all.  If he saved him again, it would all be so attractively symmetrical.

Chapter Six:  Triumph
In which Darnay's trial goes very well.

• "And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them."  Isn't there some other quote along those lines, that under the right circumstances, any person is capable of any thing?  Or did I just make that up?
• Wow.  Fifteen people condemned to death in an hour and a half.  And yet, note how Dickens is totally spinning this out -- he's all about the nail-biters.  I want to shake him and yell, "YES, THE HATS OF THE JUDGES, JURY AND AUDIENCE ARE EXTREMELY INTERESTING, BUT WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN??  YES, IT'S TRUE THAT I DON'T PARTICULARLY CARE ABOUT DARNAY AND LUCIE BUT I NEED TO KNOW ANYWAY!!"
• "So capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him."  There's something so surreal about this whole scene -- totally weird, but I keep thinking of Running Man.  (I think it must be the audience -- that for the people who aren't connected to the cases, it IS a form of entertainment.  (Well, and it's entertainment for us, too...)  Isn't there a scene in Oliver Twist where all of the rich people go to a hanging with picnic lunches?  Like that.)
• Hey, wow.  Gabelle is still alive!  And a free man, apparently.  And Darnay's first witness.  Then come Doctor Manette and Mr. Lorry, and Darnay is declared a free man.  Did that seem waaay too easy to you?  Yeah, me, too.
• "Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage."  Huh.  Well, fickleness goes both ways, and we have almost a hundred pages left...  But, at the moment, the People Love Darnay and carry him home on a big chair that they happen to have handy.
• Aaaand Lucie faints.  From happiness.  Or something.  Shocker.
• Aaaand there's the Carmagnole again.

Chapter Seven:  A Knock at the Door
In which I TOLD YOU SO!!

• Erm.  Shouldn't they be looking into GETTING OUT OF DODGE?
• I'm so glad that Doctor Manette "showed a compassionate superiority to this woman's weakness".  Awesome.
• Ah, Jerry.  Still around.  And now pretty much always at the Darnay/Manette household.  I wonder how he and Miss Pross get along.  I can't imagine that she'd take much guff from him.  What was the point of telling us about his grave-robber-y habits?  Is that ever going to tie in, or was it just, you know, local color?  Seems like he'd be able to make a killing (har har) in France, what with the bazillions of bodies just lying around (har har again).
• Miss Pross thinks of the entire French language as "nonsense".  I love her.
• No wonder I love her.  She asks all of the questions I want the answers to -- the foremost among them being, of course, why haven't they left yet?  Answer:  Too Dangerous for Charles.
• Man, even Doctor Manette is getting annoyed with Lucie.  (The elder.  The kid-version seems to be one of those soap-opera kids -- stick 'em in a corner or up in the attic until there's a family gathering in need of a Touching Moment or their presence is somehow necessary to further the plot.)
• I KNEW IT.  They've re-arrested Darnay.  Why?  WHO KNOWS?
• Ooooh.  The Defarges have denounced Darnay.  As has one other.  BUT WHO???

Chapter Eight:  A Hand at Cards
In which also sorts of awesomeness happens.

• "Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home..." Dickens-speak for 'meanwhile...'!  I like his version better.
• SHUT UP!!  Miss Pross' BROTHER?!  Is in FRANCE!?
• AND HE'S ALSO BARSAD?!!! 
• AH HAH!!  Sydney Carton IS in France!  And he's much more likable than he's ever been.
• Oh, son of a... I know where this is going.  AND I DON'T LIKE IT.
• Barsad/Solomon was also the spy in the wine-shop.  Ha ha ha.
• Ask and ye shall receive:  Jerry's grave-robbing ways have become a plot point.  Ha ha.  Oh, I love you, Charles Dickens.
• The Plan Has Not Been Revealed.  I suspect that the writers of Days of our Lives must totally love Dickens.

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16
Book the Second, Chapters 17-20
Book the Second, Chapters 21-24
Book the Third, Chapters 1-4

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

Tadmack @ Finding Wonderland

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapters 1-4

Chapter One:  In Secret
In which Darnay arrives in Paris and the inevitable happens.

• Oh, this is going nowhere good:

Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.

• And Darnay has finally realized that it is going nowhere good:

The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he would not have felt his freedom more completely gone.

• "And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night."  The red-caps were startlingly similar in attitude to the Marquis all those chapters back, and a few paragraphs down, it would be easy enough to substitute 'escorted' with 'prisoner'.  The people are still desperately poor, with the escorts twisting "straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off".
• Still, after all this, Charles Darnay expects the people in charge at the Abbaye to be reasonable.
• Then, in Beauvais:

"Everybody says it [the decree] is but one of several, and that there will be others--if there are not already--banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return.  That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own."

"But there are no such decrees yet?"

"What do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there may be, or there will be.  It is all the same.  What would you have?"

• So it came as no surprise (to me, anyway) when Darnay arrived at the Paris gates and is taken prisoner.  Defarge is there when it happens, and to be honest, I felt worse for him than for Darnay.  Maybe because I've always been more invested in him than in Darnay, and also maybe because he's clearly had reservations about the black-and-whiteness of it all.
• I felt like Dickens was speaking directly to me here, defending Darnay:

That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now.  That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now.  He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days.  And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear.  Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope.  The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away.  The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name.  The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers.  How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?

And now I feel all guilty for being so hard on him.

• What does "In Secret" mean?  That they will not tell anyone that Darnay has been imprisoned?
• I liked this:

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in company of the dead.  Ghosts all!  The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

• Uh oh.  Darnay has been in prison for point-five seconds and he's already starting to go bananas.

Chapter Two:  The Grindstone
In which it occurred to me that Dickens could have easily written vampire novels.

• I was becoming concerned that Dickens would drop the humor altogether in this third book -- but the comparison of London Tellson's to Paris Tellson's reassured me.  I loved that they "whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night".
• WAIT.  WHAT???  Now Lucie and Doctor Manette are in Paris??
• Ah, and of course Doctor Manette's history would be helpful, what with the Bastille imprisonment and all.
• "I will be submissive to you."  Because Lucie has ever been anything but?
• Wow.  The grindstone scene is seriously scary.
• And now Doctor Manette is asking for help from the grindstone people, and they sound eager to give it.
• THEY BROUGHT THE KID TO PARIS, TOO???  Wouldn't it have, I don't know, made more sense to leave her home with Miss Pross or something?
• Morning has come, with no sign of Doctor Manette.

Chapter Three:  The Shadow
In which Madame Defarge is SCARY SCARY SCARY SCARY SCARY.

• Hmmm.  Defarge is acting weird and now that he, Madame Defarge (who is knitting, which is ominous) and The Vengeance are going to see Lucie with Mr. Lorry... I'm getting concerned.  As Lucie is married to Darnay, won't she suddenly be seen as an Enemy, too?  At least Jerry is there.
• GAH.:

It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.

There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check.  She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge.  Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare. 

• Oh, man.  And it looks like Lucie, Jr. is the one who is the most danger.  WHY DID THEY BRING HER?
• This is ridiculous, but:  You know Celia's buddy on Weeds?  (I think her name is Pam...)  That's who I keep picturing as The Vengeance.  I don't know why.

Chapter Four:  Calm in Storm
In which over a year passes, and Darnay remains in prison.

• Phew.  Eleven hundred killed in four days.
• "For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power." 
• I've been trying to figure out why it is that Darnay and Lucie continue to leave me cold, while I have strong feelings about pretty much every other character in the book.  I think it's because they don't seem at all like actual people, but instead, symbols.  Or something. 
• PS.  WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO GABELLE?

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16
Book the Second, Chapters 17-20
Book the Second, Chapters 21-24

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 21-24

Chapter Twenty-One:  Echoing Footsteps
In which six years pass and the people storm the crap out of the Bastille.

• Lucie and the echoes:

At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed.  For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much.  Fluttering hopes and doubts--hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her; doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight--divided her breast.  Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves.

*Whispering*: Is this about pregnancy and childbirth?  I'm feeling really dumb right now.  Okaythanksbye.

• Oh, hey -- I was right.  Because now there's a mini-Lucie.
• Another child, this time a boy.  He dies.  His death-bed utterance ("Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!") made me feel that I must be a heartless hag, because it made me throw up a little in my mouth.
• Sydney Carton still visits occasionally, and seems to have mellowed, at least outwardly.  Lucie Jr. adores him.  (As did the apparently unnamed little boy, who also said on his deathbed, "Poor Carton!  Kiss him for me!")
• Mr. Stryver continues to be horrible.  He is now married, with three stepsons, and, "exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore", offered them up as pupils to Darnay.  And he tells everyone who will listen that Lucie tried to "catch" him.  YUCK!!
• And so now, Lucie Jr. is six years old and it is July 1789.  (Dickens spelled it out, of course.)
• Mr. Lorry continues to be my favorite: 

"I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration."

• Switch to Saint Antoine, and I found myself completely riveted (I actually didn't take any notes from here on in, so I apologize for the rest of my write-up being sketchy.):

Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed--so were cartridges, powder and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise.  People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls.  Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high fever heat.  Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.

PHEW.  At the wine-shop, Defarge is giving out weapons and orders, and Madame Defarge has put down her knitting:

Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual soft implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife.

This whole section, the storming of the Bastille, kept me completely entranced (even though we had company over (Jane calls him 'The Loud Man' -- yes, our dog talks)) not just because of the action, but also because of the rhythm.  I felt like my pulse changed pace, even.  Basically, it was awesome.  This morning:

Me:  So they stormed the hell out of the Bastille last night.
Josh:  Uh huh.
Me:  And THEN, they caught the governor of the Bastille and Madame Defarge put her foot on his neck and CHOPPED OFF HIS HEAD.  And she DIDN'T EVEN USE HER AXE.  She, like, SAWED HIS HEAD OFF WITH HER KNIFE.  Is it wrong that I think she's kind of awesome?
Josh:  (looking as nervous as he can without his morning coffee)  Jesus.

• So what were they looking for in Doctor Manette's cell, anyway?

Chapter Twenty-Two:  The Sea Still Rises
In which this says it all:  "The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest."

• Yep.  It's all about the ladies:

Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.

What would Miss Manette have been like if she hadn't been brought up in England?  And Miss Pross?

• Yow.  Foulon's death was especially brutal.  AND LONG.
• I love that Saint Antoine is anthropomorphized -- that rather than saying that the people of Saint Antoine blah blah blah, he says:

Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone.  Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets.

Chapter Twenty-Three:  Fire Rises
In which the dead Marquis' chateau (which I assume technically belongs to Mr. Darnay now, yes?) is torched.

• Unrest in the ranks:

The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do--beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.

• This was good:

The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if there were any) there was none.  The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking a the pillar of fire in the sky.  "It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and never moved.

• I did feel bad for Monsieur Gabelle hiding up on his roof -- I like him, maybe because of this:

The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.

Why would something like that make me like someone?  I'm a horrible person. 

Chapter Twenty-Four:  Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
In which Mr. Stryver is a complete jerk (shocking!) and Mr. Darnay receives a letter.

• So now Darnay is off to France to save Gabelle.  Yeah, that France.  The country where he's a dead man.  (Which, yeah, might be something that he's not fully aware of, but whatever.)  WITHOUT TELLING HIS WIFE, DAUGHTER AND/OR FATHER-IN-LAW.  Because, you know, he wants to "spare the pain of separation".  Well, how much more painful will it be for them if you get killed over there?  Huh?  Huh?  Jerk.  I told Josh that if he ever did something like that, I'd stomp right over to France and strangle him myself.  ARRRRRRRG!!!

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16
Book the Second, Chapters 17-20

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland
Heidi @ Adventures in Multiplicity

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 17-20

Chapter Seventeen:  One Night
In which Doctor Manette talks about The Past.

• Doctor Manette on looking at the moon from prison and thinking about what he'd unwillingly left behind:

"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent.  Whether it was still alive.  Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it.  Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father.  (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for revenge was unbearable.)  Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act.  Whether it was a daughter who would grow up to be a woman." 

That was it?  All that time to imagine possibilities for his unborn, unknown child and that was the only option he came up with for the female.  Nice, Doctor Manette.  Reeeeeeally nice.

• Oh, but then he talks about imagining his unknown daughter coming to his cell and whatnot.  So Imaginary Lucie still didn't get to have any vengeance fun, but at least she was a comfort.
• Have we ever even heard Lucie's mother's name? 
• "Gaunt" is the last word I'd have expected to see attached to Miss Pross.  Maybe she hasn't been eating because she's upset about her little turtledove getting hitched.
• Awww.  Sydney Carton isn't invited to the wedding?  I was hoping for AT LEAST a Jacob-Black-style minor freakout.  I apologize, Charles Dickens.  I should not sully your work with thoughts of sparkly vampires.  Lucie is nothing like Bella.  Charles, though, is a bit like Edward.  Okay.  NO MORE DICKENS/MEYER COMPARISONS WILL BE MADE.

Chapter Eighteen:  Nine Days
In which there is a wedding and a relapse.

• Oh, I forgot about Miss Pross's brother Solomon.  It's too bad that she has such a soft spot for such a bad egg.
• My hopes are still high for a Lorry/Pross union.  Even if that doesn't happen, they should live next door to each other and, I don't know, bicker constantly:

"Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.
"I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "you are."
"I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)

"My Pross"!  See, there's hope.  What, by the way, is Charles Darnay up to?  Where's he at?

• And more:

"You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the gentleman of that name.
"Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."
"Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that seems probable, too."
"And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle."
"Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern."

• "...the well-remembered expression on the forehead..."  I'm still having a hard time with her forehead.  TadMack, why oh why did you have to go and point it out to me!!?
• Ah.  Darnay must have told the Doctor whatever it was that he was going to tell him.  Like who his family really is, perhaps?
• Uh oh.  Doctor Manette has relapsed.  I wonder if it's less the wedding and more what Darnay told him...
• Wow.  Mr. Lorry took leave from Tellson's to take care of Doctor Manette.  That is HUGE.
• And now Doctor Manette is REALLY good at making shoes.  Uh oh.

Chapter Nineteen:  An Opinion
In which I decide I am totally head-over-heels in love with Mr. Lorry.

• Mr. Lorry is such a great guy.  He's, like, the Best Friend Ever.  If anything remotely bad happens to him I'm going to be horribly upset.  I love his reaction to waking up and discovering that Doctor Manette seems to be back to semi-normal:

Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own...it was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious.  If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there?

I heart him.  On the next page, Mr. Lorry bathes and whatnot, and then shows up for breakfast "in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg".  I love how he tries so hard to look imperturbable.  And I love that he's vain about his legs.

• Poor Doctor Manette.  He knows that he relapsed, but doesn't remember it and doesn't even know how long it's been.  "Of how long duration?"  That's just heartbreaking.  And Mr. Lorry is being so careful and so thoughtful of his feelings.  I LOVE HIM.
• I also love that he has almost no imagination whatsoever.  When looking for a way of replacing "shoemaking" in his conversation with Doctor Manette about his hypothetical friend, he chooses "Blacksmith's work".  He rules.  [A thought:  I don't think it is the tiny amount of beer I've just had that is making me love him so.  But it should be noted that I've had some.]
• I hope that the destruction of the shoemaker's bench will bring Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross closer together:

So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.

Chapter Twenty:  A Plea
In which I decide that Miss Manette is so lame that Charles Dickens himself couldn't have really liked her.

• Sydney!  I think it must be the beer, because now I kind of love you, too!:

"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends."

• OMG, he's even smiling??  I didn't know he knew how.
• And Mr. Darney gets points for this, in regards to Stryver:  "I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."
• "...that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me), an unornamental, piece of furniture..."  Ha ha ha ha ha.  Sydney Carton, you're okay. 
• Lucie and her forehead, however, still fail to impress me.  I hope that Dickens thought she was lame, too.  It's hard to believe that he could have liked her -- "What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!" -- it's so gag-inducing that it seems like he's almost mocking the two of them there...
• "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours."  Okay, I REFUSE to believe that he isn't mocking them there.  They are TOTALLY LAME.  Sydney, if you could get out of your own way, you'd be way too cool for this nonsense.

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12
Book the Second, Chapters 13-16

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 13-16

Chapter Thirteen:  The Fellow of No Delicacy
In which Sydney Carton bares his soul to Miss Manette.

• Oh, poor Sydney Carton.  This chapter begins:

If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette.

Judging by the chapter titles, I suspect that what goes on in this chapter will mirror what went on in chapter twelve.  But knowing what little I know about Sydney Carton, I anticipate much more drama and much more angst.

• "Don't be afraid to hear me.  Don't shrink from anything I say.  I am like one who died young*.  All my life might have been."  Yep.  Drama?  Check.  Angst?  Check.  What happened in Sydney Carton's life to make him such a disaster?  Or is this the way he has always been?
• I'm not really sure what it is about Miss Manette that inspires such depth of feeling:

"Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.  I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight.  A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

She's one of those girls who says, "O", for crying out loud!  Then again, so did the damsels in distress in silent films, and they were pretty adorably irresistible...

• And even more from Sydney Carton:

"For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything.  If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you."

I give her credit for not freaking out halfway through the conversation and leaving the room to get away from him -- to have that much unhappy passion directed at you would be more than a little scary.

Chapter Fourteen:  The Honest Tradesman
In which we learn a whole lot more about Jerry Cruncher.

• A return to Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, on his stool outside of Tellson's:

Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men.  Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.

Hee.

• Can't blame Young Jerry for crying "Hooroar!" when he realized that a funeral procession was about to pass by -- it sounds more entertaining than any actual parade I've ever seen, especially with all of the people following it and yelling "Yah!  Spies!  Tst!  Yaha!  Spies!".  The fact that a good number of the people in the crowd yelling at the mourner have no idea what they're yelling about, well, that just makes it better.  (And horrible and a bit scary, yes.  I'm not that awful a person.)
• Oh, good lord.  Now the crowd wants to pull the mourner (and, I think, the body) out of the coach.  And now the mourner has run away and the coffin has been removed and the coach has been packed full (in and out) of people from the crowd -- including Jerry Cruncher!:

Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it.  Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields.  It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roget Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction.

• And they still aren't done yet!  Now they're "impeaching casual passersby, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them".  And now with the window-breaking, the pub-plundering and so on.  Mobs are scary, but Dickens makes the scene (on the surface, if you don't stop to think about the victims) humorous**.  And as for what happened to the funeral, again, it was sort of funny on the surface, but that could just have easily been the funeral of Mr. Charles Darnay.
• Why is it that Mr. Cruncher seems sane enough in public, but then when he goes home he acts completely bonkers?  Poor Mrs. Cruncher.
• Young Jerry might me the brightest one of the lot:

"I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing.  That's where I'm going to.  Going a fishing."

"Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?"

• Hah!:

The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife.  It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.

• Oh dear.  This is not traditional fishing equipment:

Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature.

• Young Jerry follows and discovers that OH MY GOD JERRY CRUNCHER IS A GRAVEROBBER!!  Or, well, a resurrection man.  No wonder his hands are always rusty.

Chapter Fifteen:  Knitting
In which we hear about the capture of the man who killed the Marquis.

• Back to the Defarge wine-shop.  It this THE Jacques???  The writer of the note found on the dead Marquis??  He is a "mender of roads".  I know this because he was called a "mender of roads" three times in half a page.  So I think that might be important.
• Ah.:

Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a court-yard, out of the court-yard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret--formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-whop singly.  And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.

I get the distinct feeling that things are really going to start Coming Together.  And also Happening.

• Oh, I LOVE IT.  They're all called Jacques.  FANTASTIC.  Of COURSE it's a code name.  Why didn't that occur to me before?  I'm so dumb.
• And OF COURSE the mender of roads with the tattered blue cap is the same man the Marquis spoke with...
• Jebus.  So that's what happened to the man who killed the Marquis.  Well, I'm depressed. 
• And Madame Defarge's knitting:

"Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it--not a syllable of it.  Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun.  Confide in Madame Defarge.  It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his mane or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge."

Well.  She and her knitting are just AWESOME.  She's a little scary, too, though.  For that matter, it's all a little scary.  More than a little.

• This was excellent:  "During the whole of the scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces."

Chapter Sixteen:  Still Knitting
In which a spy is no match for Madame Defarge.

• Madame Defarge is vengeance personified, I think.  Knitting will never be quite the same for me.
• Oh, fab:

Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate.  Curious to consider who heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.

• A rose in her head-dress as a signal that there is a spy -- I love it.
• Ooo.  According to the spy, Miss Manette is to marry Mr. Darnay.  And uh oh:

"But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, "that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who just left us?"

_____________________________________________

*A guy in college once said to me (I swear I am not making this up) that he had "lived beyond his years".  It was not a line that worked.

**It made me think of Claudius' description of Caligula merrily shoving people into the ocean.

_____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9
Book the Second, Chapters 10-12

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack at Finding Wonderland
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 10-12

Chapter Ten:  Two Promises
In which Darnay Has A Talk with Doctor Manette about his feelings for Lucie.

• Another year has passed.  I hadn't realized that this book took place over such a long span of time.
• Mr. Perfect Darnay is a go-getter, teaching and tutoring and translating (elegantly, fo course).  I'm sure that eventually, Miss Manette will keep a very lovely home for him.  (Because regardless of how much Sydney Carton lounges around and moons at her, it's just not going to happen.  Right?  Right.)  I shouldn't be so snarky about Charles and Lucie, but they remind me of another very bland couple -- Ivanhoe and Rowena.  SNOOZE.  Characters who are completely GOOD are rarely very INTERESTING.
• Then again, did Darnay off the Marquis?  That would be interesting and not snooze-worthy at all.
• This made me like him, though:  "He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it, and made the best of it."  And I loved the idea of him as a "tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages".
• He's in love with Lucie Manette.  Well, freaking DUH.  Sweet, dear, compassionate, tender, etc., etc., BIZ-ARF*. 
• This:

...the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water, and the long, long dusty roads--the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream--had been done a year...

Really makes it sound as if he did it.  Is Mr. Charles Darnay actually a killer?  Could his soppy nature all be an act?  Could he secretly be a vigilante?  Oh, PUH-LEASE let it be so!

• He's so perfectly honorable:

"I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the world.  For which reason, Doctor Manette," said Darnay, modestly but firmly, "I would not ask that word to save my life."

I really should like him more.

• Ooo.  Was Mr. Darnay going to tell Doctor Manette who his family is and/or about his uncle? 
• The image of Doctor Manette going back to his room and working on his shoes is a good one.  Not a nice one, as it's totally depressing and sad, but it's certainly effective.

Chapter Eleven:  A Companion Picture
In which Sydney starts out wasted and then proceeds to get wasted-er.

• Poor old Sydney is wearing a towel again.
• "Stryver the portly".  Ha.
• Ha ha:

"Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog."

"And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a sensitive and poetical spirit."

Oh, hell.  I know where this is going.  I realize that a lot may have happened over the past year, but does Stryver really think he has a chance with She-Of-The-Perfect-Forehead?  Really?

• Yep.  Yep, he does.
• And Sydney takes it, well, sort of stoically:

Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.

"Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver.  "I don't care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself.  She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune.  Are you astonished?"

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I be astonished?"

"You approve?"

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?"

• Stryver is a jackass:  "The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as her was, and four times as offensive."  Sydney should totally break up with him.

Chapter Twelve:  The Fellow of Delicacy
In which Stryver is an ass.

• Oh, he's SO HORRIBLE AND STUPID!!:

Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation.  After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between in and Hilary.

He's just as bad (if not almost worse) than Mr. Collins.  If Lucie hits him with a parasol, I will never mock her again, I SWEAR.

• Oh, phew.  Thank heavens for Mr. Lorry.  Even with a beating-by-parasol, I don't know if I'd have been able to survive the horrible awkwardness of a Stryver proposal.

____________________________________________

*Oh, God.  I blame the boys for that.

____________________________________________

Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5
Book the Second, Chapters 6-9

_____________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland
Heidi @ Adventures in Multiplicity

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 6-9

Chapter Six:  Hundreds of People
In which we enjoy the return of Miss Pross, Queen of Awesome.

• Four months later...
• In addition to the many other perfections of Miss Lucie Manette (Yes, TadMack, I am including her forehead!):

Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics.

I suspect that cartoon birds braid her hair in the morning, too.*

• "...Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand..."  Hooray!  She's back!  I hope she uses her manly strength to fling someone across the room again!
• Have you ever noticed that people talk to themselves A LOT in books?  I know lots of people who mutter to themselves (including myself on occasion), but very few who actually talk to themselves in grammatically correct, full-length sentences.
• Miss Pross should totally be the female lead instead of Miss Manette:

"I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross.

"Do dozens come for that purpose?"

"Hundreds," said Miss Pross.

It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.

Poor Mr. Jarvis Lorry.  He's so totally out of his depth with her.  "...Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything."  Hee.

• Gosh.  I don't think I've ever met one of these "creatures":  "...one of those unselfish creatures---found only only among women--who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives.
• Enter Mr. Darney, who might be Miss Pross' "Hundreds of people", as she got all twitchy and had to go inside almost the moment he arrived.
• Mr. Darney's story about a hidden compartment in the Tower caused Doctor Manette to give him That Look again -- what does it mean, I wonder?  Is he scared of Mr. Darney himself?  I don't think so.  Of something Mr. Darney knows, or something Doctor Manette is afraid he might know?  Something Mr. Darney reminds him of, or something Doctor Manette suspects him of?  ?????
• "Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two."  Okay, now I like him again.  The lounging did it.
• Gosh.  Was the storm, oh, I don't know... FORESHADOWING?  Oh.  Yep.  Mr. Dickens does love to let his audience know that Something Big is coming:  "Perhaps.  Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too."  What's amazing to me is that even though it's rather over-the-top, it's still very effective.  Or, at least, it made me all shivery.

Chapter Seven:  Monseigneur in Town
In which I got so caught up in the action that I didn't actually take any notes so I'm just going to throw some quotes up.

• The bit about Monseigneur and his chocolate is wonderfully nasty:

Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.

• "The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.""  Oooh ho ho, he's so totally going to get smote.
• "The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur.  In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong."
• "The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner.  But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could."
• ""It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children.  One or the other of you is for ever in the way.  How do I know what injury you have done my horses?""  I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd torn him limb-from-limb after that little speech.
• Who threw the gold coin back at the Marquis (who so totally would have been fine with a hit-and-run if his horse hadn't fallen)?  Was it the newly grieving father?  Defarge?  Madame Defarge?  (Probably not Madame Defarge, as she seems to be more of a watcher than a do-er, but if anyone could bend down, pick up a gold coin and throw it through the window of a moving carriage WHILE STILL KNITTING, it would be her.)

Chapter Eight:  Monseigneur in the Country
In which the Marquis continues to suck mightily.

• Crops in the country, not so abundant.  And:

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments.  It had its poor people too.

• Sooo.  Spectre or real person hanging from the Marquis' carriage?
• "The half dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate."
• Okay, I admit it.  I'm feeling a little bloodthirsty.  Actually, more than a little.

Chapter Nine:  The Gorgon's Head
In which I used an impressive amount of self-restraint and didn't swear AT ALL in regards to the stupid and horrible Marquis. 

• "...in a luxurious age and country."  HA!  Well, for the Marquis, at any rate.
• Nice.  The Marquis is spooked.  I hope.  He deserves to be the main character in one of those old radio horror plays -- you know, the ones that always end with the main character either going bananas or dying due to The Fear.
• Oh.  Charles Darney is his nephew?  I wondered, at the end of the last chapter, if he could be Monsieur Charles...  So is that why Doctor Manette gave him The Look?  Because there's a family resemblance and the Marquis had something to do with the imprisonment, or maybe because he saw Darney at some point during his imprisonment?
• And I haven't forgotten that Sydney Carton looks just like Charles Darney.  Mysteries upon mysteries!
• "...the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring."  Excellent.  I like that someone can  run people over all over the place and still be considered well-bred.  You suck, Marquis!
• YES!!  But who killed the Marquis?  Somehow I doubt it was actually a spectre.  Who is this JACQUES??  I hope Mr. Charles Darney doesn't get blamed.

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*Yes, I swiped that from Veronica Mars.

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Previously:

The Reading Schedule
Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6
Book the Second, Chapters 1-5

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Other readers/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland
Heidi @ Adventures in Multiplicity

_____________________________________________

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 1-5

Book the Second, Chapter One:  Five Years Later
In which a boot is thrown, a young boy is curious, and not much else happens.

• I know someone who would fit right in at Tellson's Bank:

This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business.  Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment.  Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thanks Heaven!--

• Fab:

When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.  They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him.

• I realize that Chas. Dickens didn't technically get paid by the word, but by spelling out the year every two pages, he does add significantly to his 32-page goal...  then again, the rhythm of it is nice.
• "Anna Dominoes".  Ha.
• Because he runs errands at night, I assume?:

It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy. that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up the next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.

Or, judging by the speech that follows the boot bit, he might just be bananas.

• Iron rust, hmmmm?

Book the Second, Chapter Two:  A Sight
In which I learn that the precursor to razzle-dazzle was jingle and jangle.

• Jerry's conversation with the clerk is a brief reiteration of the death penalty passage from the previous chapter.  ("But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's.  Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? ... Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after.") I rather think the clerk in this scene would be very satisfied with the idea of a clean desk, as it were. 
• It had never occurred to me that the prisoners might pass on their horrible prison diseases to the judges (or anyone else in the courtroom).  Yikes.
• "...the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action..."  I know I've already said this, but WOW.  Before reading this book, I never associated sarcasm with Dickens.  He follows that up with:

Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept that "Whatever is, is right"; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

• "As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun."  He sounds DREAMY.  I hope he doesn't get drawn and quartered.
• Wait, Miss Manette and her father are witnesses for the prosecution?  NO!  That can't be, can it?  But Charles Darnay can't really be a bad guy... right?

Book the Second, Chapter Three:  A Disappointment
In which the chapter title totally gives away the verdict of the trial.

• Mr. Attorney-General is quite dramatic:

That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off.

• Ah HA!:

Ever borrow money of the prisoner?  Yes.  Ever pay him?  No.

I loved that paragraph.

• And the next witness is just as fantastically unreliable:

He had never been suspected of stealing a silver teapot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one.  He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence.

• Oh, poor Charles Darney and Miss Manette!  They're clearly in luuurve and the judge is so very harsh!  I may swoon!
• So Mr. Carton is all slouch-y and awesome, huh?
• I especially liked the comparison of the onlookers to blue-bottles.  The buzzing is right, as is the mindlessness.  And the swarming.  And the attraction to decay and rot.

Book the Second, Chapter Four:  Congratulatory
In which Carton and Darney go out do dinner and Carton gets wasted.

• Huh.  Carton has had his moments, but he is rather tortured:

"As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it.  It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it.  So we are not much alike in that particular.  Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I."

• But then he threw his empty glass over his shoulder at the wall (Why?  Why not!) and that made me like him again.  (As long as I avoid thinking about whoever's going to have to clean it up.)
• Oh, hell.  I don't know how I feel about Carton. 

Book the Second, Chapter Five:  The Jackal
In which we get much more of Sydney Carton and his tortured self.

• Good lord.  I can't even follow a movie in that state, let alone legal papers.  Sydney Carton, at the very least, has a very impressive brain.  And l like his taste in head-wear.
• Poor old Carton, in doomed (That's my guess -- I can't imagine her getting with a sarcastic, bitter guy like Sydney.) luuurve with Miss Manette.
• Sad!:

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

Previously:

Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland
Adventures in Multiplicity

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the First: Recalled to Life, Chapters 4-6

Chapter Four:  The Preparation
In which Miss Manette is told that her father is still alive.

• I like this:

The Concord bedchamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but what kind of man was seem to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it.

And then at least seven employees of the hotel (including the landlady) stand around and wait to see what Mr. Lorry looks like all cleaned up.  Hee hee.  Oh, and just for kicks I looked up sea-coal.

• And I liked the little details in the description of Mr. Lorry:  that he "had a good leg, and was a little vain of it" and that his stockings are of a better quality than the rest of his his clothes.
• "It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last from France."  AH HA!  Now WHAT was THAT all about?  (Sometimes it's fun to write like Harriet M. Welch.)
• If waiters nowadays just took a step back and stared while I ate, I would go bonkers.
• "...and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.  It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly.  The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped int the sea."  Okay, I'm at the point where I want Dickens to come over to my house and tell me stories by the woodstove this winter.  If he was still alive, I mean.  Not so much wanting the zombie version.
• "Feelings!  I have no time for them, no chance of them."  I don't buy it.  The description of his eyes earlier, his reaction upon seeing her, his general fidgety demeanor during this conversation, etc.  Oh.  Maybe he's trying to keep her calm by keeping a calm face himself?
• I hope Miss Manette's lady friend has more to do in the story.  She's awesome:

"If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?"

This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.

Chapter Five:  The Wine-Shop
In which we learn that life in Paris is less than awesome.

• Gosh.  He doesn't bother with any subtlety when it comes to the foreshadowing, does he?:

Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his fingers dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

• "Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and re-grinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young..."  I don't even know what to say about this -- combined with the bit about the sick fish from the previous chapter, I'm totally depressed that I haven't read more Dickens.  HE'S CRAZY!  (IN A GOOD WAY.)
• Wait.  Madame Defarge is the knitting lady, right?  That's actually the extent of my knowledge about her -- that she knits.  A lot.
• I liked how Defarge made as much noise as possible when going into Monsieur Manette's room, so as not to frighten him, I assume.  What was up with letting the three men look in on him?  To show them what had been done to him, what he had gone through?  And to maybe spread the word about it?

Chapter Six:  The Shoemaker
In which we meet Miss Manette's father, who is quite possibly a broken man.

• This hurt:

Mr. Lorry had come silently forward. leaving the daughter by the door.  When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up.  He showed no surprise as seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe.  The look and the action had occupied but an instant.

• This hurt, too:

"Did you ask me for my name?"
"Assuredly I did."
"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."
"Is that all?"
"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

• Okay.  All of the repetition in Miss Manette's speeches is getting to be a little much. 
• "Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing."  I can't imagine standing and knitting for any length of time.  Maybe she moved a chair into the doorway.  But then she walks and knits:

Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the court-yard.  She quickly brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.

Color me impressed.

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Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack at Finding Wonderland

Adventures in Multiplicity

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Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

Oops.

My Big Read post will go up after work today -- it was my day to post over at Guys Lit Wire today, so that messed with my timing this morning.

Never fear, though -- there will be more A Tale of Two Cities goodness!  I will, I will, I will stick to my schedule!  (Also, I really want to find out what this Recalled to Life business is all about!)

!!!

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the First: Recalled to Life, Chapters 1-3

Book the First, Chapter One:  The Period
In which we get a broad overview of the times, and I discover that Chas. Dickens is actually pretty funny.

• Whenever I start "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." in my head, it ends, "that is the question".  Which, of course, makes no sense.  But that's always what happens.  LIT MASHUP!  YEAH!!
• I actually liked the second, less famous paragraph more:

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France.  In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled forever.

• "Supernaturally deficient in originality..."  Ha!  I had to look up the Cock-lane Ghost.  As I went through an excessively long ghost phase in elementary school, I'm surprised I hadn't ever run across that one.
• I liked this:  "France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it."  The next sentence, about the "humane achievements", was wonderful.  It made me laugh (from shock more than anything, and because it just kept GOING and GOING) and turned my stomach at the same time.
• The plethora of brief examples of highwaymen and thieves in England was, of course, greatly appreciated.

Book the First, Chapter Two:  The Mail
In which the action begins with a messenger almost getting himself shot.

• Trudging along next to the coach as the horses barely make it through the mud and up the hill is NOT AT ALL how I usually picture travel by coach -- though I guess it's probably much more realistic.  Sad.
• Did Dickens write any Gothics?  Because I'd read 'em:

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none.  A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do.

• I'm finding that I'm enjoying Dickens' rhythm and pacing and description.  When we were force-fed Oliver Twist (which is the only Dickens I've read other than A Christmas Carol) in ninth grade, I remembered liking it despite all of that (and especially what I thought of as his long-winded-ness), because I got hooked on the story and the characters -- but this time through, almost every sentence is giving me a clear, sparkly-bright image in my head.  (Even when it's of a dark and muddy night.  You know what I mean.)
• Hee hee hee: 

"I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window.

• The mail coach guard is very blustery, isn't he?  (Can't blame him, of course.)  I love that he capitalized the word 'Lead'.
• Jarvis Lorry's fellow passengers continue to be hilarious:

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep.  With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

I suppose I should be concentrating more on the Mysterious Message (Wait at Dover for Mam'selle) and Just As Mysterious Response (RECALLED TO LIFE), but... that'll all become clear soon enough.  Hopefully.

• The guard and the coachman:

"Did you hear the message?"
"I did, Joe."
"What did you make of it, Tom?"
"Nothing at all, Joe."
"That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it myself."

Book the First, Chapter Three:  The Night Shadows
In which the coach passenger sleeps lightly and has creepy dreams that I don't understand.

• Dickens seems to have a high opinion of horses.  There's a bit about the mare's "private topics of uneasiness" here, and there was also a bit about Reason at the beginning of Chapter Two.
• Erm:

He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave.

I assume this is metaphorical, as the guy is supposed to have been buried alive for eighteen years.  I also assume that everything in this chapter will be explained, and soon.  I'm not just being dense, right?  Right?

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Other reader/bloggers:

An introduction to The Big Read III at Finding Wonderland (TadMack)
Chapters 1-3 at Finding Wonderland

An introduction to The Big Read III at Finding Wonderland (a. fortis)
A bit more from a. fortis (second paragraph)

Adventures in Multiplicity

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Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens

September 3:  Book the First, Chapters 1-3

September 5:  Book the First, Chapters 4-6

September 8:  Book the Second, Chapters 1-5

September 10:  Book the Second, Chapters 6-9

September 12:  Book the Second, Chapters 10-12

September 15:  Book the Second, Chapters 13-16

September 17:  Book the Second, Chapters 17-20

September 19:  Book the Second, Chapters 21-24

September 22:  Book the Third, Chapters 1-4

September 24:  Book the Third, Chapters 5-8

September 26:  Book the Third, Chapters 9-12

September 29:  Book the Third, Chapters 13-15

As with the other two Big Reads, this is the schedule I'll be following.  What you decide to do is up to you!  If you do post as you read, let me know in the comments and I'll link 'em all up.  If you don't have a copy and it's checked out at your library, it's available for free at Project Gutenberg and there's a free audio version at Librivox.

The Big Read III?

I'm going to take advantage of my current French Revolution mania and finally read A Tale of Two Cities.  Anyone in?  If so, I'm planning to start next Wednesday & I'll post a schedule shortly.