Dickens, 200th birthday

If Dickens was immortal, he would be 200 years old today. If he was alive nowadays, he would probably have lots of friends on Facebook and he would be trending topic on Twitter quite often. He enjoyed such a fame and popularity during his lifetime that no other British writer has equalled him since then. Even Queen Victoria is said to have read his novels fervently. These were published serially in newspapers and delivered in monthly instalments, which were awaited eagerly.

The portrait he made of Victorian London is unforgettable, part of our cultural subconscious: an age of Puritan morality and strict discipline, with fathers depicted as god-like figures allowed to beat children and submissive wives; that awful fog that even made pedestrians die from walking into the Thames; the horror of prisons where whole families had to live due to debts; the chimney sweeps and the cruel conditions for orphans at boarding schools... He was the first great novelist in English to make childhood central to his fiction. Deeply wounded by the experiences of his early life, he was not only an entertainer but also an influential spokesman who attacked that new capitalist society and soulless and sordid industrialism.

Although he wrote for adults, not for children, I first encountered Dickens when I was only eight. I remember it perfectly because it was thanks to a classics illustrated comic book I got as a present for my First Holy Communion. Among other versions by authors such as Jules Verne or Stevenson, it included A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield. Those well-rounded and enduring characters struck me. So trapped and fascinated did I feel that, when I started to read those lively plots, I could not give them up until the end. I was just a child, but now I believe it is incredible that at that early age I already got acquainted with Paris and the French Revolution or 19th London. Sometimes I wonder what kind of literary and historical references children have nowadays. We used to follow the adventures of D´Artagnan and The Three Musketeers, The Quixote, Tom Sawyer or Willy Fog in his 80 Days Around The World. Now they follow Sponge Bob and Dragon Ball... Maybe it is also just a question of belonging to another age...

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (2011)

Inspired by The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, hurricane Katrina and a love for books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore praises the imaginative and captivating power of stories and the magical way in which books feed our soul. It has won the Oscar Academy Award for best animated short film in 2012.

Books fill our life. Every time we open one and we get wrapped up in a good story, we are taken on a extraordinary journey. We are quickly transported into a time and place where nothing else exists. Our minds are broadened and nourished. Books are meant to educate and inspire us, to lift us from our current states of indifference. Our existence is given life only when we start reading.

Saint Patrick's Day

This weblog begins on the 17th of March of 2012. From the Irish capital of Dublin to the US city of Chicago, where the river is dyed green, thousands of people around the world are celebrating Saint Patrick´s Day.

It commemorates the most recognizable of Ireland´s patron saints and the arrival of Christianity in that country centuries ago. It is a day of parades, fireworks shows and marching bands. Participants dress up as leprechauns and green clothes and shamrocks are worn. Saint Patrick was said to have used this three-leaved plant to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. 

Having started with this entry about Ireland may not be just a coincidence if the aims of the blog are to promote good reading and share a passion for literature. It is remarkable that such a small country has been recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature on four occasions so far: Yeats, Bernard Shaw, S. Beckett and Seamus Heaney.