A Christmas Carol

What Hacker News says

1. smurdaOct 2026
   I have very few holiday traditions, but one is I listen to his one man show reading of a Christmas Carol. It's a great 1 hr and 45 min spent during the holidays: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JCE3CU
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2. wblAug 2026
   "A Christmas Carol" will never be a great novel, but there is a reason it is beloved the world over for what it is.
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3. kstenerudOct 2024
   Have Space Suit Will Travel (Heinlein)

   Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)

   Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (one story in the book "Different Seasons" by Stephen King)

   Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)

   The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)

   Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky)

   Frankenstein (Shelley)

   Brave New World (Huxley)

   Farenheit 451 (Heinlein)

   Never Cry Wolf (Mowatt)

   A Whale for the Killing (Mowatt)

   The Machine Stops (Forster)

   Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

   Starship Troopers (Heinlein)

   The Jungle Book (Kipling)

   Lost in the Barrens (Mowatt)

   The Republic (Plato)

   Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke)

   Ringworld (Niven)

   The Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison)

   The Hobbit (Tolkien)

   Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)

   The Odyssey (Homer)

   The Man who Would be King (Kipling)

   The Pearl (Steinbeck)

   Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche)

   Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)

   A Scanner Darkly (Dick)

   The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)

   Dracula (Stoker)

   To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

   The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)

   Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

   The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)

   A Christmas Carol (Dickens)

   Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (Carroll)

   Watership Down (Adams)

   Gulliver's Travels (Swift)

   Animal Farm (Orwell)

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4. iancmceachernMay 2024
   >Not my problem, you can't just come to Walgreens "I'm poor please give me stuff for free BTW nice cart can I take it"

   Two things:

   1 - Alas, yes it is your problem. You can't squeeze blood from a rock. You have two options. A - evict them or whatever or B - be compassionate and help to get them back on their feet. If you add up the costs to you for each I'm confident you will find that kindness is more profitable. I encourage you to do the math for yourself, you may be leaving money on the table.

   2 - They do give away free food, medical supplies and even toys at Walgreens. I see people using their EBT card, donating to the toy drives and food banks there daily. Local stores are a key part of our system to collect and distribute resources to the under nourished and under privileged.

   Not all handouts are theft. You seem to automatically equate handouts to theft. Perhaps do some self work to see where this connection started.

   I'll sum it up for you: You could be even richer if you were kinder. If you do so, you'll find other forms of richness as well (not just financial). To help you on your journey I suggest you read (or watch) The Christmas Carol, I like the Muppets one. It's not a religion thing (I'm not), it's a kindness benefits everyone, including yourself, thing.

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5. AlbertCoryMar 2024
   Read Bartleby the Scrivener. Or A Christmas Carol.
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6. Freak_NLDec 2023
   I feel privileged to never having read Dickens before my thirtieth or so (I'm not a native English speaker, so avoiding Dickens as a teenager was trivial); it would have given me the wrong impression. His works are great, but require increasingly more cultural baggage to fully enjoy (excepting the Christmas Carol, which is kept in the public consciousness by various factors, including muppets). I can't imagine assigning his novels to minors unless accompanied by lessons providing a lot of context — from historical notes on Victorian society, class struggle, and the meaning of words used daily back then, but obsolete now ('phaeton' is a fun one).
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