Thursday, May 14, 2015

CHARLES DICKENS AND JANE AUSTEN PUT THIS TO GOOD EFFECT

HERE I am today at the Soloneion book centre in Nicosia, doing what I love best, i.e. reading! Other favorite activities include, inter alia, writing and buying lipstick, of course! No lipstick today, today it was books! I bought a volume of collected stories about plants, with illustrations, and a book about money. I really love to read about money, though I have none myself (except just enough to buy books & lipstick). Books and lipstick can buy happiness, but money cannot. Happiness comes from within, and has nothing to do with lack of trouble or lack of money. A confident person can feel happy midst trouble and economic difficulty. Charles Dickens and Jane Austen put this to good effect. Ebeneezer Scroodge, Dickens's miserable rich protagonist in A Christmas Carol is world famous, but the idea that money may bring misery is everywhere in Dickens, from Dombey and Son to Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend! And who would change Elinor or Marianne Dashwood for their rich sister-in-law Fanny, in Austen's Sense and Sensibility? Reading is happiness, and can be absolutely free. Have a happy afternoon!


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