Well, well -- nothing like ringing in the New Year (albeit a day early) with Charles Dickens: What he did for Christmas in the story about the old miser Scrooge, he did again a year later for New Year's Eve with this story; which is, however, quite a bit darker than A Christmas Carol.  Once again, a man is swept away to see the future; this time, however, it's not a miserly rich man but a member of the working classes, a porter named Toby (nicknamed Trotty) Veck eeking out a living near a church whose migihty bells ring out the rhythm of his life -- as if Dickens had wanted to remind his audience that the moral of A Christmas Carol doesn't only apply to the rich but, indeed, to everyone.  Along the way, the high, mighty and greedy are duly pilloried -- in this, The Chimes is decidedly closer to Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, A Tale of Two Cities, and Bleak House than it is to A Christmas Carol -- and there are more than a minor number of anxious moments to be had before we're reaching the story's conclusion (which, in turn, however, sweeps in like a cross breed of those of Oliver Twist and Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest).

Richard Armitage's reading is phantastic: at times, there are overtones of John Thornton from the TV adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, (or in fact, both John Thornton and Nicholas Higgins) which matches the spirit of the story very well, however, since workers' rights and exploitation are explicitly addressed here, too, even if this story is ostensibly set in London, not in Manchester.

In the context of the 16 Festive Tasks, The Chimes is an obvious choice for the New Year's Eve holiday book joker, so that it is going to be.

January left me feeling like I had been through a drought. Thank goodness for Louise Penny on audio book or the entire month would have been a loss. Still, I needed some great historical fiction and have a great TBR in mind for February.

Part of my problem in January may have been my deviations from my TBR. A heavy month for audio and NetGalley reads, it's not surprising that it was somewhat disappointing. But, moving on....here is the breakdown:

Audio Books

A Fatal Grace

The Cruelest Month

The Chimes

Mrs Zant and the Ghost

NetGalley

Jesus, Pope Francis, and a Protestant Walk into a Bar

The Herald of Hell

Woodlawn

Book Club

The Stand

That leaves only Black Christmas 1349 as a book I selected on my own - sort of. I read it while it was free for a limited time on the English Historical Fiction Authors website. Didn't I just make a resolution to choose my reading more carefully?

Like many other Dickens novels, I felt like I was dragging myself through this book. It felt sort of like trying to read The Professor after enjoying Villette. For everyone other than the 1 person who understands that reference, I mean to say that this book will disappoint if you're looking for another Christmas Carol.

The Chimes has obvious similarities to A Christmas Carol. Occurring on New Year's Eve rather than Christmas Eve, we get a similar eye-opening spiritual visit that causes the protagonist to change the way he thinks of himself and others and appreciate what he has. The difference is that Toby, or Trotty as he is more often called, is poor rather than rich like old Ebeneezer.

The first half of the book is classic Dickens with obnoxious rich people putting Toby and his daughter down, making him believe that he is impoverished because that is what he deserves. This rambling narrative has little point besides making sure that the reader remembers that Victorian era rich people were all jerks.

Then, Toby is visited by the spirits of the chimes who allow him to see a possible future in a way that is reminiscent of but not nearly as satisfying as the similar scenes for Scrooge. Showing a poor man a poor future just packs less punch, I guess.

I was bored. Even with skilled narration by Richard Armitage, I just wanted this to be over.

It's so much easier to compile my monthly TBR when I wait a few days to see what books I have started!  ;-)

I requested Woodlawn from NetGalley to read with my star athlete 12 year old...let's just say I may end up reading it by myself. The Stand is a book club read that I am enjoying more than I anticipated, though I am less than 100 pages into this 1000 page book. On the other hand, The Herald of Hell, another NetGalley read, looks right up my alley and I'm having a difficult time getting into it. I guess 2016 is going to be full of surprises!

A little over halfway through the audio book, I really hate to drop this book.  But I'm a little over halfway through the book and I'm not entirely certain I know what I've been listening to.  Granted, I could have kept listening to it passively and then "finished" it off and gave it a half-hearted rating...  But I couldn't bring myself to do that.  Nor could I bring myself to continue listening to it when I'm not sure I know what's going on--nor have I actually really been paying attention either.

Anyway, it's probably better for The Chimes if we went our separate ways for the time being.  I may try to pick it back up next Christmas, but I highly doubt it.

I'm really sorry, Mr. Dickens.  It seems we were only ever destined to see eye-to-eye with A Christmas Carol.  Unless, for some reason I can get myself to give Great Expectations a fourth try.