The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits
By: Les Standiford / Narrated By: Jonathan Davis
Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
I wanted to love this, truly I did! But holy COW is it dry!
First let's get to what is a total pet peeve, irks me, drives me up the wall, etc. etc. etc. And that's the production sloppiness which is practically unforgivable if you're doing an >ahem< AUDIObook. Here in The Man Who Invented Christmas there's American-accented Jonathan Davis narrating his little heart out of the life and times of English Charles Dickens (Whom he at times kept calling Dickinson...), and wouldn't you know it that the editing was so shoddy and uneven. It's one of those things where you're used to voice, volume, and tone, only to have the next paragraph wither and die away, all muted, as though our dear narrator had been stuffed in a closet, only to have after that the next paragraph simply blast your earbuds off from clarity and loudness. Oh how I haaate that. I was walking along, doing my Christmas shopping when all of a sudden I'd shuffle my steps and slow down in an effort to try to hear what was being said, followed by jumping out of my skin as my poor eardrums throbbed in agony. I s'pose the entire book would have to be recorded again rather than re-edited as, seriously, this happened throughout the entire book.
Sometimes I can actually get past woeful production quality because the story is heart stopping or maybe the writing is so gosh-darned good. Alas, that's not the case here. Normally, as I'm a sap, I'll listen to ANYthing "Holidays" cuz it'll put me into a nice and warm spirit, and considering this is about one of the best stories ever penned, I was sooo ready to love it. I hear tell that a sweet movie was created from this work, but frankly, I can't see how as it reads like a scholarly text (Of course, one scholar reviewed it and said that it was more fluff than research-based--So there's that).
If you go into this book thinking you're going to get a birds eye view into Victorian England and what society and the holidays and everything like that was like, with the world Scrooge moved through weighed aside it, you'll get a bit of that. Mostly, though, Scrooge's world isn't touched upon; this is not A Christmas Carol centric; rather, it's aaaaaall about Charles Dickens.
Which would be okay, but my how author Les Standiford does go on so. We not only get the man's publishing history (Okay, I guess he wanted to give us all context?), but we get Every. Single. Book written and Every. Single. Unit sold. Not only that, but then each book's numbers are weighed against each other for even more details which have nothing to do with anything and most CERtainly do not get one listening to the book into a holly jolly Christmas mood. I s'pose it's meant to just show us how Dickens was on a downward slope as far as his career was going when he had the idea for the book. Dunno, just assuming. But lemme add that I did some pretty heavy-duty yawning the looonger it all went on. Add to that exact details of his woes with publishers and illustrators, and reviews of his books, and yes, you have what will be yawn-inducing unless you're interested in publishing houses of Victorian England.
It does start promisingly, showing Dickens as a boy, stuck filling pots with boot blacking as a way of providing income since his father owed money and was doing the whole debtors deal, leaving young Dickens being exploited for the child labor he would later write so famously about. And then when, after EVERY other book/serial has been gone over, we do get to the actual story of Scrooge and his redemption, things pick up a bit because, really: Aren't we all looking to this book cuz we love Scrooge and his story?
Alas, it's only a rehashing of the book when it's discussed, and quite frankly, I'd rather just listen to the Simon Vance narration version of it--Much warmer, much more touching than a synopsis quickly run through.
And while the end of it, with the story of how Dicken's followup Christmas ditties, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, made me wanna go back and listen to the Richard Armitage and Jim Dale narrations, respectively, it all wasn't enough to save the book for me.
If you want a details-oriented text and bio on Charles Dickens and the financial straits he was in; if you want to get a feel for how publishing worked in the day, this book is for you.
But if you want to listen to something that'll melt your heart and make you want to go around and wish strangers a Happy Holiday? Noooo! I mean, that's what A Christmas Carol and Jacob T. Marley are for!!!
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