I had this audio book since last year when I didn’t get around to reading it so I thought this New Year’s Eve would be excellent.  And then on New Year’s Day I’ll read something which has just been released.  

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The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In
*By Charles Dickens 1844
Read by Richard Armitage 3h 40m Rating:  B – even if it is a classic.
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This is the first of four Christmas novellas Dickens wrote in the years just after A Christmas Carol was published to such wide acclaim.

Trotty is an old man who sits by the steps of a church building in which there are chimes which count off the hours and the quarter hours. So the narrative is broken into four chapters or quarters.  Trotty’s business is to deliver messages for various individuals, but he remains poor. It’s New Year’s Eve and Trotty is depressed because crime and unsavory activities seem to be increasing in the city.  His daughter comes to him and announces that she and her long-term fiancé will marry the next day. 

Over the course of the rest of the evening Trotty visits the church and goes upstairs where goblins scold him for his lack of faith in humanity.  Then he’s shown what the future might hold and it’s different from A Christmas Carol.

It’s okay –  I enjoy A Christmas Carol ever so much more.