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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.

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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
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?"

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*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.

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*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.

_____________________________________________

Previously:

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

_____________________________________________

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.

______________________________________________________

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack at Finding Wonderland

Adventures in Multiplicity

________________________________________________

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!)

!!!