Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

Belated (one day late) 200th birthday greetings to Charles Dickens! This great novelist has given so much pleasure to so many readers for so long. NPR.org had a nice article about Dickens' birthday yesterday, in which Linda Wertheimer quoted Dickens biographer Clare Tomalin as saying "After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters." Dickens' novels often contain 100 characters. Tomalin tells us that "David Copperfield" was Dickens' favorite of his own novels. In the same NPR article, novelist Jennifer Egan (a San Francisco native) reminds us how relevant Dickens still is. For example, she says, in 'Bleak House," "one of the major characters is [in] corporate litigation, and the way in which it consumes all kinds of people associated with it" is very relevant today. Egan goes on to get to the heart of the matter: the way Dickens' novels catch up and entrance readers. She tells of a a recent experience, in which "I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation." Thank you, Charles Dickens, for your wonderful novels.