| Title | : | Un canto di Natale other stories (Storie Meravigliose) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | Italian |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 292 |
| Publication | : | Published December 10, 2022 |
Un canto di Natale other stories (Storie Meravigliose) Reviews
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Book 1 of Charles Dickens' The Christmas Books is composed of two beautiful classic stories or short novels: A Christmas Carol (1843) and The Chimes (1844). They are old, old works but their messages still sound true even up to now. Also, they are still very readable. In fact, I know some friends who make it a point to read A Christmas Carol every year.
A Christmas Carol in Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. 5 STARS
The most popular among the 5 books included in this book, The Christmas Books. Why is my friend reading this yearly? It probably reminds her of the real meaning of Christmas. There is nothing wrong having merriment inside the house say with our loved ones. We give them gifts, we bring out our best recipes, we decorate the house, we play and sing Christmas carols. We celebrate Christmas and the coming of the babe in the manger. However, the activities should not stop there. We real meaning of Christmas is to reach out to the less fortunate people. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we need to help the family of Little Tim and try to make their Christmas as happy and merry as ours. We should not wait for the three ghosts to come knocking at our doors to awake us and realize that Christmas is really about helping each other and not about material things. Please.
The Chimes: A Goblin Story. 4 STARS
Quite similar to A Christmas Carol since this came after Dickens got so popular with it. If Carol is set on Christmas Eve, Chimes is set on New Year's Eve. If Carol has the cynical, bitter and indifferent Scrooge, Chimes has the pessimistic Alderman Cute. Cute's putting down attitude on things dampen the spirits of the people around him and so they become pessimists like him and view the world negatively. The Chimes here are the bells near the place where the main protagonist Trotty works and each ringing of the Chimes has some effects to him. Effects that could make him reminiscence of the past or wake him up of his stupor to plan for the future. However, his future as well as his daughter Meg's are both bleak and that negativity is further dampened by Cute.
Like Carol, Chimes also ends up happily. Very appropriate holiday reads.
I am now looking forward to read Book 2 that includes the three other novellas or short stories in this seemingly beautiful classic The Christmas Books.
Merry Christmas, everyone! ho ho ho -
My copy is a Dean & Son I've had since childhood which also includes The Cricket on the Hearth. All wonderful. After all,they're classics for a reason.
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Ever wonder why "A Christmas Carol" is the only one of Charles Dickens's Christmas stories to get a lot of attention? He wrote five of them after all.
The answer to this is that overwhelmingly, that story is his best. But if your Dickens holiday fix isn't filled by that wonderful story, here's my ranking of all five so you can decide if you want to pick them up this season. All except the last have a supernatural element which is satisfyingly mysterious.
1. A Christmas Carol. Hands down the winner of all the books. If you can read nothing else this season, this would be your book. It is more wonderful than any movie adaptation could ever be. One of my favorite lines is from the description of a grocery store during Scrooge's visit with Christmas Present. "There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe." No time to read it? I just discovered a new audio adaptation of the book. I haven't been able to listen to all of it but the beginning is marvelous.
2. Cricket on the Hearth--A Fairy Tale of Home. Easily the winner of the cheesiest movie adaptations. This is sad because it's a very good story. But I guess if you give a filmmaker a lovely blind girl who makes dolls and a poor father who creates a rich, imaginary world for her, said filmmaker can't resist the maudlin. But the center of the story is not Bertha and her father Caleb. The central characters, John and Dot Peerybingle, are mismatched in age and John begins to doubt Dot's love for him. A beautifully written story, all is happily tied up at the end but not before several of the characters have gone through depths of human despair. Ignore any sappy movies you've seen and read it. It's so worth it.
3. The Chimes. This story paints the bleakest picture of the poor in all the Christmas books. Instead of a miser, Dickens uses a man named Trotty for his main character. In a very "It's a Wonderful Life" way, he learns what the consequences of his actions might be. His daughter is in love, but he doesn't believe that the marriage should go forth because of their poverty. I find this story distressing. The main character is such a nice little man and the visions he receives so horrible, that at the happy end, I find my heart still broken.
4. The Haunted Man. In this story, a bitter professor named Redlaw is haunted by past grievances and hurt. When a ghost offers him the opportunity to forget all his wrongs, he accepts. But something unexpected happens. He is still angry but doesn't know why and he spreads his bitterness to others. It has a satisfying happy ending and there are some memorable characters to make the story go along. The book is very atmospheric but doesn't have the appeal of the top three.
5. The Battle of Life. No supernatural beings in this one. Just interesting folks who seem to be in love with the wrong people. Dr. Jedlar and his two daughters, Grace and Marion, live on a former battlefield. Dickens suggests that the memories of the battle haunt those who live on it.The character of Clemency Newcome, who is Dr. Jedlar's servant, is delightful and she gets her happy ending too. This one to me is the least Christmas-y and perhaps that's why I like it least.
All these stories are in the public domain. But if you want a hard copy, seek out the Oxford Illustrated Classics version has all the original illustrations! And it's small enough to stick in a tote bag or backpack for some reading while waiting in line at the dentist's office or grocery store. -
I have this tradition - every year, on Christmas day I whip out my copy of "A Christmas Carol", read it cover to cover and follow it up with a Christmas special movie to wrap up the day.
So, this year, A Christmas Carol has been read, "
Arthur Christmas" has been watched (ADORABLE MOVIE. MUST WATCH), and awesome cake has been had. Life is good.
Merry Christmas, everybody! -
Actually - I've read A Christmas Carol but not The Chimes or Dickens' other Christmas stories. i think he set out to write one every Christmas for several years in a row.
I've listed this because of A Christmas Carol - the source of every stage and film retelling, of course, and amazingly, in my experience the source of all of what seems to be the embellishments in each retelling. the depth of detail in Dickens' book is incredible and Dickensian, of course. What a great idea for the end of a year and the beginning of the next and the Season of Light - to consider one's current life with a view to one's past and a look at what might lie ahead - all based on one's frame of mind. -
I loved both of these stories so much. This was my first time reading Dickens and definitely won't be the last - he's my dad's favourite writer and I can see why, he's a great writer, sharply politically and leans heavily into pathos without it ever feeling over the top, somehow. It's an impressive balancing act. Incidentally, I borrowed my dad's little two-volume box set of these and when I pulled them out there was still a Christmas bookmark in with them that I made him at school probably close to 20 years ago :').
ALSO I am now making it my mission to decide what the best adaption of A Christmas Carol is and so far, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, the Muppets version is killing it. -
I really enjoy this book. I think it will be read every Christmas..
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For me, this one was a little harder to understand when compared to “A Christmas Carol.” A New Years novel to ring in 2021 ✨🔔
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I'll keep defending A Christmas Carol against it's haters. What good is it to have all the right doctrine but no love or generosity?
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One of those books that everyone thinks they know, but probably not all have read. This was my first read. It's a lot of fun, the language playful, the message warm and sympathetic. Great stuff
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This book has both A Christmas Carol and The Chimes. I've always read A Christmas Carol every December as a read-aloud to the family, but never got around to Dickens' New Year's story, The Chimes. But I finally read both over the holidays. The Chimes is similar in its message and delivery as A Christmas Carol (its structure is a little more vague however, and you have to keep on your toes for the transitions). There are haunted chimes, rung by goblins, to ring in the New Year. What's not to like? The cruel treatment of the poor, and the responsibility to help the poor, is even more dramatically on display in The Chimes than it was in A Christmas Carol. One scene in particular may be troubling to children. Dickens does a great job showing how we should not let others validate our worth, that wealth and station are not what determines worth.
Apparently Dickens wrote 5 Christmas stories, and after reading the two in this book, I think I'll have to track the rest down for next Christmas, to see what they're like. I love Dickens' descriptive writing! -
A Christmas Carol is a masterpiece of yuletide sentiment, with a heartfelt if overly-idealistic, moral. That moral, however, softens us to the profit-greedy capitalist who can actually see the error of his ways, and weakens the social commentary. Reality has proven it will take more than ghostly visitations to scare any heart into real-life Scrooges, but this is fiction, so for a short time we can let ourselves enjoy the world of a master story-teller. The Chimes, though it contains several brilliantly bitter anti-capitalist passages & caricatures – properly lacking any Scrooge-like redemption – concludes with its proletariat Veck smitten by a romanticized acceptance of his place in society, without the entertaining le mot juste narrative that redeems A Christmas Carol.
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Eerie, profound, and funny. I like how the message was Biblical without stuffing it down one's throat. Though Dickens never claimed Christianity, I have a sneaking suspicion that he was a low-key Christian (yes I just made that term up).
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5 stars just on the basis of "A Christmas Carol," which is utter perfection and God bless us every one. One star for "The Chimes", I'm afraid. Dreary, preachy stuff.
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"dear God, they are good - and I feel so good after them - I shall do good and lose no time - I want to go out and comfort someone - I shall give money. Oh, what a jolly thing it is for a man to have written books like these and just filled people's hearts with pity." And what a great thing it is to have an author such as Robert Louis Stevenson write such about one's work. This quote, of course, was in response to Dickens' two Christmas books, "Carol" and "The Chimes," both of which appear in this volume.
The station Charles Dickens was born into would seem to have little semblance to that of his wretched characters, but many events in his young life sparked a great degree of compassion for them, as seen in these two Christmas books and in many of his other works. It could easily be argued that Dickens used the pen as a means for social change. He was born into a middle-class family, but his father was actually committed to a debtors' prison in Southwark when Charles was twelve. The young boy was also forced to pawn his beloved book collection and to leave school to take up employment at a rat-infested factory, likely a seminal event that sparked the activism that would mark the course of his life. He was always moved by the plight of poor children, particularly children working in factory and mines. He took up the cause of child-laborers in Cornish tin mines in 1843, in the wake of a report published early that year by Parliament, which exposed the tragedy of child laborers.
I find that the stories behind the stories are often just as fascinating as the actual published works themselves, and these two are no exception. "A Christmas Carol" was first published by Chapman and Hall, with whom Dickens eventually parted company, in 1843. It was written in a period of transition, when past holiday traditions were apparently being re-evaluated, with some of the trappings we now commonly associate with the holiday, such as Christmas trees, coming into fashion. Dickens seized upon the opportunity to write his magnum opus with the rise of the popularity of Christmas in the mid-19th century. He followed in the illustrious footsteps of other authors who had done likewise, such as Washington Irving.
Despite his popularity, he had suffered some financial setbacks but recovered with the publication of "A Christmas Carol," which has become timeless. It was initially published in December, 1943. Only a year later, thirteen editions had been released, a testament to its popularity. It has been adapted countless times into theatrical productions, movies and even cartoons. The book was apparently stolen and published by another company shortly after its initial publication. I find it rather ironic that this issue resulted in Dickens taking legal action against the publishers who ripped him off, who were eventually forced into bankruptcy. Don't seem to show too much of the Christmas spirit! Oh well.
The second work herein isn't nearly as popular as the first, but it's still considered a holiday classic. It's basically a fantasy story, published a year after "Carol," the second in the five novella which comprised his "Christmas Books" collection. The chimes were reportedly influenced by the bells from a church in Genoa, where the Dickens family was spending a holiday. As with the first, it has a moral message, telling the story of a poor messenger, who is experiencing some melancholy at the reports of crime in the newspaper. It was also the subject of stage adaptations, and an estimated 20,000 copies of the novella were sold in the first three months after its release.
Both are thoroughly Dickensian, and are worth a read, if simply to get a greater sense of his overall literary style and moral message. -
The second of five Christmas stories, this was written in 1844 after Charles Dickens' celebrated publishing of "A Christmas Carol" the year before. I confess that while the former is as timeless and cherished a piece of classical literature as has ever been taken to heart by readers and audiences of all walks at Christmastide, the follow-up "Goblin Story" left me completely bewildered as to how the featured hauntings could effect the aged protagonist's redemption--thematically similar to Ebenezer Scrooge's own--but not so eloquently conceived. Dickens had vacationed in Genoa, Italy, and heard the bells at midnight, inspiring the notion that voices could be heard in their chimes. Thus the beckoning voices of the bells becomes the main venue of the spirit world's encantations emanating from goblins that reside within the steeples; their hauntings intended to lure Toby "Trotty" Veck to seek them out by climbing up to commune with them on a New Year's Eve. An endeavor few mortals would dare to chance for fear of falling to their death. Indeed, this is supposedly Toby Veck's fate, or so we are made to believe by the goblins, to which he becomes a ghost who in the spirit realm will see the grim future of his daughter, Meg, her husband, Richard, her baby, a stranger he meets on New Year's Eve named Will Fern who is at risk of being arrested as a vagabond, and whatever unknown fate will then befall Will's young orphaned niece, Lillian, who though jobless and homeless and penniless he's taken her with him to keep her from becoming a condemned ward of the state. Being poor, all are essentially doomed and given up for lost souls unless Toby's moral awakening can stir a redemptive desire to gain forgiveness for his thinking that the poor as a class are cursed at birth, innately bad and troublesome and unworthy; not welcome in the world, nor deserving of a place in it. Their grim futures foretold, he wakes up (I guess). Change of heart, forgiveness granted, he assumes a renewed physical presence to rejoin the living and, somehow through his influence, is destined to alter the fate of his charges effecting their long-term care and well-being. Which is never really clear, being 60 years old and poor all his life, how any of that, God willing, is imagined to be accomplished. But the spirits' good works--if goblins as agents being on the side of angels are to be believed--are manifest in a righteous, completely out-of-left-field happy, happier, happiest ending ringing out the old year and ringing in the new. Toby's daughter's wedding that was broken off, is on again for a triumphant start of the New Year, friends and neighbors suddenly appear celebrating the festive occasion of New Year's and a wedding both, contributing to the wedding feast with all the trimmings of food and drink. And great joy. And a future of promise. Humanity renewed. Wait, did I sleep through an important part? Here we are and here we go. I'm sorry, Charles, the thing is a mishmash and it was all just too much for this mere mortal to follow. Not a ghost of a chance. Though well-received in its time, "The Chimes" has not withstood the test of the ages continuing to be so universally loved as your gifted storytelling that preceded it. Am guessing in advance--having not read the other three Christmas stories in the series--one out of five is not bad. Not bad at all given the one ghost story "A Christmas Carol" is what came off as a first draft written between only Halloween and Christmas. Scrooge was redeemed. And so too the world. Or so we all like to imagine--if only one day out of the year.
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A Christmas Carol needs no introduction. Suffice to say beneath the ghost story and the personal redemption is some of Dickens most biting social criticism. Scrooge is a monster, poisoned by greed and suffering but he embodies the worst aspects of his age. While some of it ( the woefully unfunny pun on Bob’s name and a shilling) is irritating , it is supremely evocative - right from the comparison of Scrooge’s chambers with a lost child , and Bobs peace in visiting Tim’s grave . Each encounter reveals more touches .
The Chimes almost eclipsed it in popularity in Dickens lifetime . This is a very different tale but still showing some of the same critiques . Toby Veck is a beleaguered figure, as if this time it was Bob who gets haunted . Constantly put down by his social betters , he needs to regain hope and faith in human improvement and to move beyond his self pity . A very different moral lesson . By the end it’s not certain which is dream and reality and so this conceptually daring book deserves to regain some prominence . -
I’m ashamed to say that I have only ever read one novel by Dickens and that was in school, Hard Times put me off. I think I have seen 5 different movie versions of The Christmas Carol, my favourite being Scrooged, so this year I decided to finally get around to read it.
I have to say I really enjoyed the story. It was beautifully written and showed great moral and societal messages. Scrooge goes from being a mean spirited, stingy horrid man to a revitalised and generous one. I liked how the Ghost of Christmas past, present and future yet to come showed him where he went wrong and lost his sense of goodwill and love for his fellow humans and where his present course will ultimately lead him. If only we were all so lucky to be able to view our mistakes and future so clearly do mend our ways.
I give this book 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 for the stunning prose with atmospheric visuals as well as a story that got me thinking about ways to improve my own life and ways of doing things. I also look forward to reading more from Dickens in 2021. -
It was simply wonderful - no other word will do - to go back to the text of A Christmas Carol: a story that we all know so well, but don't often read "in the original". It sparkles. The colours, smells, sounds of early Victorian London ooze from every sentence.
I took care to read it attentively, and was captivated by the writing. I noted how Dickens plays fast and loose with the conventions of language - sentences with no verbs, sentences that are just lists - and tells his story with skill, passion, and(ultimately) joy.
Christmas Carol is unmissable.
"The Chimes" I had never read before. I became badly lost in the third chapter, but all became clear eventually. It was apparently a big success in its day, but is more obvoiusly didactic and less captivating that Christmas Carol; nonetheless, I'm glad to have discovered it. -
Most people that know me know that I love A Christmas Carol. I don't even know how many times I've read it at this point. This was my first time reading an edition with endnotes, and it made clear that this seemingly universal story was in reality a timely and often biting political commentary. Shouldn't expect otherwise from Dickens. It also hit me harder emotionally this year than maybe it ever has before.
I read the second story, The Chimes, for the first time. There were parts of it I thoroughly enjoyed, but in the second half the melodrama and lessons got a little ridiculous. However, a lot of the political content continues to be relevant. I was especially struck by his take down of the prison-industrial complex, a still necessary commentary nearly two centuries later. -
I can't find the Kindle edition that I have. It is only A Christmas Carol, series edited by Cynthia Brantly Johnson.
I am very familiar with the material. I have watched various editions of filmed versions since childhood, and I have been involved in performing an adaptation the Orson Welles Radio script for three of the last four years. The Welles script retains much of the dialogue but trims the narrative for time and clarity for modern audiences.
I watched the movie, THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS over Dec. 24 and 25, 2021. I found it an interesting companion to reading this version of Dickens' novel. I found it to be an enthralling interpretation of how he completed the book on a short deadline before hitting the shelves, and selling out, before Christmas on the year it was written. I haven't researched the film's historical accuracy, but it has a compelling story.
Finally, I found it very satisfying to read a version of this classic story as he originally wrote it. -
“A Christmas Carol” has the vibrant imagery, unique specters, and compelling moral (“maybe try to be less of an asshole at Christmas, hey Scrooge?) which are all missing in “The Chimes”.
As is the case with the rest of the Penguin Classics’ Chuck D. Collection: the introduction lays the groundwork and opens up portals of interest, the footnotes provide solid context, and the appendices deliver additional trivia for a scholarly feel. -
Read his others while in school and struggled because I found them boring at times and hard to understand. I found this book when I won some book inventories at an auction and this one stood out! Last Christmas season for some reason I picked it up and actually enjoyed it. Glad I did. I am not sure if I will read the others. I won’t be selling this one in my store. Another of his books I will save in my book collection!
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Considering it was written over 170 years ago, it is very easy readable! The Carol is a well known funny story, The Chimes has a darker undertone and left a more unpleasant feeling. Nice to read them both at the appropriate time of year.
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The lessons of The Christmas Carol are recalled in a haunting tale of poverty as only England can convey it. The lessons are the same. You could stage it in any city in America or England....a lovely Christmas read.
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My first time actually reading a Christmas Carol and I thoroughly enjoyed this true classic. I was so moved by the Chimes. A much darker read but the editorial notes helped in understanding the terminology used. This powerful story truly touched me.
