David Copperfield

Just finished Dickens' 900 page, largely autobiographical, novel about the boy who, despite early hardship (the loss of his Mother after the unnecessarily harsh treatment by David's dictatorial stepfather, Mr Murdstone and his spinster sister, his relationship with that austere pair and his running away from an extremely hard job as a young child in London to his only known relative, Betsy Trottwood in Dover) manages to lead an eventful life and become a famous writer.

At 938 pages it's a long text but well worth the read, written in Dickens' elaborate prose and peppered with a myriad of characters including the hideous Uriah Heep.

This was Dickens' 8th novel and it's genesis can be traced to a trip that Dickens made to Great Yarmouth. He filled his story with orphaned children, scenes from his trip and the village of Blundeston, the place he named as the book's narrator's birthplace.

This book appears in the Big Read's Top 200 at 34 but i have a better source of literary inspiration now. I recently bought "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" (morbid title) and have read 20 of them (27 on the Big Read list), including David Copperfield. Pitiful.

I've just started To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and will follow with Birdsong. Shorter books...