Reflections on reading David Copperfield

I've just finished reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, a monumental undertaking that took me four months. Not because David Copperfield was difficult or dull, mind you, but because it was long. Exceedingly long. (And because I read it in chapter increments after midnight most of the time.)

Among other things, I learned that it's best to read David Copperfield on a Kindle. Not only does this make you look exceedingly cool, it also keeps you from knowing exactly how big the book really is. You blithely begin clicking "Next Page" on your Kindle, and you feel like you're flying. Before you realize it,  you've clicked yourself 78 "pages" into a Dickens novel and you're only 1% through the book. But you're hooked. The only consolation is that you don't have to carry around a Penguin Classic paperback that's roughly the thickness of a cinder block. (And the people on the bus assume you're reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest or The Wall Street Journal.)

David Copperfield is one of the finest novels I've ever read. As I begin to reflect on the significance of the book (a process that generally takes me a day*), I set it alongside other Dickensian productions like Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities**. I am struck by Dickens' portrayal of:

• the uplifting power of love between man and woman
• the strength of the lex talionis (the law of retribution in kind) in the universe
• the beauty of personal integrity
• the worth of each individual
• the distortion unrighteousness introduces on the soul by small degrees
• the possibility of noble sacrifice (or the blessedness of bearing necessary hardship)

I think I could go on, and I think I probably should. This short list, however, will help me arrange my thoughts for the future as I run back over my marginal notes and highlights.

For now, let me say that I think all people with a love of literature, Dickens, life, or humanity should read David Copperfield. But not before reading a shorter work by Dickens (let it be A Tale of Two Cities), and not before purchasing a Kindle so you look cool while being ... not cool.
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* The process generally only takes me a day because I begin reading another book and stop reflecting altogether. 

** I put it alongside those two books because they're the only other Dickens novels I've read. (Unless you count the Muppet rendition of A Christmas Carol.)