So, let’s wrap up our Dickens journey this week, with Stave Five, “The End of It.”

What strikes me about this last section is its extreme economy. Our dear pal, “a lesser writer” would, I expect, have juiced this thing a little more.

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The first version of “A Christmas Carol" I ever experienced was the old “Mr Magoo” cartoon version – and this part of the book (Stave Four, with hooded Death and that damned long beckoning finger) filled me with dread even then.

What a terrifying idea: to look at one’s own grave.

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We might think of structure as a way of dramatizing a logical argument, or working through a consequential question.

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Well, Annemarie Gallaugher has come through for us again, and sent me this list (below) of our most powerful reading experiences of 2024, gathered from your responses to my post of December 8th. Thanks, Annemarie - I’m sure people will find this incredibly helpful as they start planning their 2025 reading.

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I’ll start out by saying that “ A Christmas Carol” is my favorite book of all-time. I used to pretend otherwise, not wanting to be labeled a sentimentalist but now, having recently turned 66, I don’t seem to care anymore. 😊

Not everybody loves it. Mark Twain was no fan. “There is no heart,” he said. “No feeling—it is nothing but glittering frostwork.” This is, weirdly, the opposite of the usual objection to it – that it’s too full of unearned feeling, too sentimental.

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All right, so let’s start in our great A Christmas Carol adventure.

The book is divided into five “staves.”

I propose we read it in a slightly different way than we usually do. Normally, I give the assignment, we take a week to read it, and then, on the next Sunday, I weight in, and all of you weigh in, in the Comments.

In order to get it all read by the first week of January, let’s try to live by the following schedule, as depicted in the following wobbly, homemade Table:

And I’ll remind us all of the schedule week-by-week, too…

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