AN AMERICAN CAROL: This twist on Charles Dickens features three spirits that give an anti-American filmmaker a lesson in U.S. values. With Kelsey Grammer.

Of course, Bill O'Reilly is cast as himself.

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Bleak House (Penguin Classics)

The biggest suprise of all, though, was that I ended up loving it.

There were so many memorable things about the book:

• I loved that all the places and characters had names that suited them (Miss Flite is a crazy old bird lady, Mr Krook is a bad guy, etc.) except for...wait for it...Bleak House, a happy safe haven!
• Krook spontaneously combusted!! Someone spontaneously combusted in a Charles Dickens novel. I can't even wrap my brain around how awesome that is.
• The minor characters were amusing rather than annoying. I especially liked Mr Jellyby with his head perpetually against a wall, Mr and Mrs Bagnet who have the most solid marriage in all of literature, and on and on.

I even liked Esther, who seems to garner a lukewarm reaction from other readers. She was a little more perfect than necessary, but I quite liked her. I also really liked John Jarndyce, even if his proposal to Esther skeeved me out a little bit. Richard was amusing at first, and then just annoying. Of course you would die, you idiot. *rolls eyes*

One cool extra feature of my edition (Penguin Classics) is a timeline of sorts written out by Dickens as he was plotting the book. He wrote just one or two words to tell him what he plot points he needed to bring up, when he needed to bring them up, and which characters would be featured Here's an example:

Tulkinghorn? Yes. Mr Snagsby? Yes. Mrs Snagsby? Yes. Slightly.

I highly recommend this book. It's a chunkster, to be sure, but a book that you can really take your time with and savor.

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