A Tale of Two Cities

Is it heretical to rate a Dickens book anything less than a 5? Sadly, as much as I eventually enjoyed the story, I found it to be very wordy, slow at times, and confusing at times. But overall I liked the character development and found the last third of the book to be exciting and fully interesting. Worth a read, not just for historical/ cultural value.

That is what I wrote on goodreads, and I think it does a good job of summarizing my thoughts about the book. Overall, I decided it was worth a 4.

When I told my husband I had never read A Tale of Two Cities he was surprised. It is that much of a classic, one that everyone has heard of, and one that is expected to be in the vernacular of a well read person. Yet, it was never one of my assigned high school books, and I think that most classics are in danger of never being unless they are forced reading. You don't usually tell your friends to read a classic like you do Hunger Games, you aren't typically going to read it either before or after a big blockbuster film, because if they are going to be made into movies, most of them already have been.

Yet, I was completely in the dark about this book, except for the first line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I didn't even know that it was about the French Revolution, until we got to that point in the book! Even the blurb on the back cover, which I read about halfway through the book, was a spoiler for me.

I started listening to it as an audiobook on itunesU, which is a great app by the way, in that there are many classics available to listen to for free, as well as lectures about a diverse and large number of topics. For the first portion of the book, I was content to listen to it slowly, and whenever I happened to have a good time to listen. Then it got more exciting, and I started listening to it more at home, purposely seeking out times to listen. Then it got to a point where listening wasn't good enough (which frequently happens to me with audiobooks) and I happened to own the book (thanks to my husband's high school book collection), so I learned the conclusion of the book partly by reading and partly by listening.

As I said in my short review, I did come to enjoy the characters, and especially how they were shaped and changed over the course of the book. But no matter how much I got drawn into the story, no matter how much I found myself enjoying the characters, I couldn't rate it a five.

There were complete paragraphs that I would have edited out, and as much as Dickens is a renowned author, I felt that he was confusing at times. Even as someone who loves to read, and went up to AP English in high school, I found myself having to go online to have portions of the story explained to me.

Overall, I would say, prepare yourself for confusion, and excessively wordy paragraphs, but also for an adventure of a story (once the revolution starts), and joining the large portion of the population who have already read this famous story.