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1. CC-in-VA - November 7, 2010 at 9:00 pm

   Review by CC-in-VA for A Christmas Carol (Apple Classics)
   Rating:
   Many versions of Dickins’ classic “A Christmas Carol” are actually abridgements (done more or less smoothly) but this version is complete and unabridged. Even if you think you are familiar with the book you may find upon reading this one that you previously had read a shortened version! The completeness of this volume would be reason enough to add it to your library, but the quality of the pages, typeface, and above all the lovely illustrations scattered throughout further commend it. I have bought copies for all 3 of my grown children–because every family deserves to own a complete version of this classic story and this one is the best I have ever seen.
2. Reviewer - November 7, 2010 at 9:50 pm

   Review by Reviewer for A Christmas Carol (Apple Classics)
   Rating:
   I collect “A Christmas Carol” and this is a particularly lovely volume. The illustrations are wonderful and the overall quality, printing, binding and paper, is terrific. This is definitely in my top three favorites of all the different versions I own.
3. Susan K. Schoonover - November 7, 2010 at 10:14 pm

   Review by Susan K. Schoonover for A Christmas Carol (Apple Classics)
   Rating:
   I hope all readers take time to read A CHRISTMAS CAROL in the original language Dickens used in the 1840′s. Dickens’ language remains humorous, descriptive and insightful and not inaccessible to most modern readers especially with the use of a good glossary. This is a great read aloud for families at Christmas time and also a great introduction to Dickens and other Victorian writers. Don’t settle for an abridged version. Read this masterpiece the way it was intended
4. Troy L. - November 7, 2010 at 10:26 pm

   Review by Troy L. for A Christmas Carol (Apple Classics)
   Rating:
   I’ve been shopping on Amazon for years and this is the first review I’ve ever left for a purchase I made; that’s how impressed I was with this book. I also collect versions of the classic story and I agree with the other reviewer that this is positively one of the best, ever. A majority of the pages have beautiful illustrations that wrap into the text or take the entire page, the binding and cover is understated yet perfect for this book. This is the unabridged version, the original text of the author. If you were to own just one copy of A Christmas Carol, this would be it.
5. T. Simons - November 7, 2010 at 10:42 pm

   Review by T. Simons for A Christmas Carol (Apple Classics)
   Rating:
   As to this kindle edition: it’s reasonably well-formatted on the k2, but still has a few typos; the spacing is generally clear. There wasn’t a clickable table of contents — like a lot of other free Kindle books, this is pure text only — but since this is really more a single short story than it is a book (1065 kindle “locations”), that’s not a major fault, and the price makes up for it.

   As to the story itself: I doubt there’s an english-speaking child who doesn’t have at least some familiarity with some version of it; I think every saturday morning cartoon series ever did some version, and every other sitcom. This is the original novella that inspired all those adaptations.

   That’s the biggest hurdle when reading this: it may be hard for some readers to get past having heard some version or other of Tiny Tim shouting out “God Bless Us, Every One” in five hundred different ways every year of their lives, and some readers might find parts of the story hackneyed in the same way that other Christmas classics have become overplayed (anyone who’s worked in a mall during the Christmas seasons will know what I’m talking about).

   Despite that, though, this is still a classic story, and readers who can get themselves past that hurdle will be richly rewarded. There’s a powerfully archetypal story here, and one that still managed to tug at even my cynical heartstrings, even as overexposed as I’ve been to endless re-adaptations; I suspect it will do the same for most other readers as well, as long as they’re willing to let it.

   Even if you don’t feel like getting into the Christmas Spirit, though, it’s a great introduction to reading Dickens — probably his shortest major work, and illustrates several of his major themes (urban poverty, workhouses, the Poor Laws, the inadequacy of contemporary aid to the poor, and, generally speaking, man’s inhumanity to man). The language is fairly accessible even to a modern reader (Dickens frequently gave public readings of it).

   Perhaps most interesting is how much influence this single story has had on our entire modern conception of the Christmas holiday — it’s this one tale that in many ways created, idealized, and shaped the modern notion of Christmas, almost singlehandedly transforming Christmas from the celebration of a sacred holiday to the celebration of a family feast. In the century or two prior to this, the holiday had primarily been seen as a twelve-day rural celebration by a whole village or manorial community — a celebration that had largely fallen on hard times, due both to Cromwell’s Puritan abolishment of Christmas celebrations during the 1640′s and 50′s and (more crushingly) the increasing urbanization and industrialization of British life, which made such celebrations impractical or impossible. This single story took what had been a dying tradition and revitalized it for the industrial era, refocusing it on the (relatively) secular themes of charity, love, friendship, and the nuclear family — the same ideas, essentially, that are commonly held at the heart of our Christmas holidays today — and showing urban families a way to celebrate the holiday and make it meaningful. In a very real way, this story saved Christmas.

   So, if you haven’t already read it, do so. It’s the original — often imitated, never duplicated. It might tug your heartstrings, and there’s something to learn, too, both about the history of the Christmas holiday and its modern meaning.

   If you decide after this that you want to read more Dickens, he wrote a number of other “Christmas Tales” — “The Cricket on the Hearth” and a few others. For the most part they’re skippable, not up to the archetypal heights Dickens struck with _Carol_. Instead, I’d recommend _David Copperfield_; it was Dickens’ favorite of his own books, probably the best of his longer works, and it both compares well with “Carol” and strikes on many of the same themes (charity, social injustice, cruelty).