The 306 Greatest Books #116 - David Copperfield

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

This was one of the longer books I have read in a while and I did greatly enjoy it. I found myself wondering what was coming around every turn of the story. Although, after reading the "review" that was found at the end of my version I did notice some rather odd things about the story. Mainly, the first part of the book felt very, very different from the rest of the book. The first part was rather dark and things kept getting worse and worse for David. Once that portion was past though, the book seemed to level out and although there were some bad times, there was nothing quite like that first part. Another thing that has me confused is on the title itself. The story is named after the primary character, David, who for one doesn't go by "David" for the majority of the story. Also, the story focuses more on the supporting characters than on David himself. I felt I was watching the lives of the secondary characters pass through, rather than seeing the story change by any actions of David himself. The story itself was very well written and I was surprised that characters that seemed to be one-note characters would constantly reappear later in the story. Many of these characters did get tiresome, they eventually did redeem themselves by the end. The story itself is easy to follow and well written and I must say this was the best Dickens' story I have read. By the end of the story, I did feel that some of the character arc conclusions left a little to be desired. But overall, the story was well done and I would have to recommend people pick it up.