Hard Times by Charles Dickens (January 28 - February 20, 2005)
Dickens describes times and places so well that you can see the setting. Louisa
and Tom Gringard are educated by their father to care only about facts, rather
than fancies and emotions. While he thinks this is best for them, during the
course of the novel, you realize just how detrimental this unbalanced attitude
towards education is.
Louisa marries, not because she feels devotion to her husband, but at her father's suggestion. Tom, meanwhile, threads down the path to disrepute. Neither is happy. In a second story, Stephen Blackpool is a poor, hard-working man, with no means to escape the fate he was born to - a life of work without reward. As his path crosses paths with the Gringard family, more troubles befall him and his times grow harder.
