reading all books referenced on Gilmore girls

Synopsis:

This darkest and most colorfully grotesque of Charles Dickens's novels swirls around one of his most beloved and unsullied heroes, the orphan Oliver Twist. 

One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Dickens's great novels, "Oliver Twist "is also famous for its re-creation through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes of the vast nineteenth-century London underworld of pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickens to task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believable way, but readers over the last century and a half have delivered an alternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned Oliver one of its author's most loved works.

 

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Fun Stuff:

LibriVox: Listen to Oliver Twist free audiobook

Goodreads: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Wikipedia:  Charles Dickens    &    Oliver Twist

Let's set the scene...

Jess returns the copy of Howl that he "borrowed" from Rory's room.  The marginalia makes Rory realize that Jess is going to surprise her.

 

Rory: I thought you said you didn't read much.
Jess: Well, what is much? Goodnight Rory.
Rory: Goodnight Dodger.
Jess: Dodger?
Rory: Figure it out.
Jess: Oliver Twist.
[Rory smiles and nods. They both walk away.]

 

 

My thoughts:

Anytime I read about the conditions of English workhouses, I start to feel really guilty about complaining that my work mail exchange server was acting up again.  That guilt lasts for about 12 seconds until I realize at 5pm that the 25 emails I had sent from 11am on were sitting in my outbox for some unknown reason.   And then I feel like I'm being hounded by the beedle and systematically abused and starved.

 

Too far?

 

Reading this was special to me as this was the book that gave me the idea to do this in the first place.  About 4 years ago, I was watching Nick & Nora/Sid and Nancy and came upon this scene.  It hit me that the only reason I knew the reference Rory was making was due to watching this episode previous times and Jess giving me the answer.  So I picked up Oliver Twist... one of the few pieces of classic literature I had read since high school.  Reading the final page, I realized just how much I was missing in my reading life.  So I thought about all of the literary references in Gilmore girls and just how few of them I had read.  

 

And hence, Black, White & Read Books was born.

 

So... uh... Oliver Twist.  It was essentially 350+ pages of me being violently angry and amazed that everyone in Dickensian England was a complete and total toolbag.  But hey... Dickens!  YAY!