Story time

I went through a reading slump recently. It just seemed to take me forever to get through a volume - of my own choosing of course. But now I leaped through a few light reads to get back into a nice rhythm. No heavy non-fiction at the moment.
Recent books include - Tethers End by Margery Allingham, Second Horseman by Kyle Mills, School of Essential Ingredients, The Sidewalk Artist, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and now Oliver Twist.

I know the characters from the musical we performed in high school, but not the book, oddly enough. Like his other books, David Copperfield comes to mind, it takes a few pages to get used to the style, the extended sentences and wordiness, but there are fewer characters to sort out. But what strikes me most right now, about one third through the book, is the very black and white-ness. I get the class thing - you just did not cross the class lines. BUT Dickens is painting a very stark picture of morality. If you did one crime, petty or major, your soul was painted dark forever by society. Perhaps this will evolve as the story unfolds. We will see how much room Dickens allows for forgiveness and redemption on an individual level.