On January 22, 2012, the Faith and Fiction Book Group will meet at the church to discuss The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.  As always, the group welcomes anyone who has read the book. 

The book can be read online or downloaded from Project Gutenberg by clicking on this link: The Old Curiosity Shop.

The Old Curiosity Shop was first published as a 71 chapter serial in Dicken's weekly publication, Master Humphrey's Clock.  Published in England and delivered by ship, each week interest in the story about young Nell Trent grew.  By the the time the 71st chapter was published, the hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented.  In 2007, many newspapers claimed the excitement at the release of the last chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel.  It is reported that in Boston, nearly 4,000 people gathered at the dock to await the ship that carried the final chapter.  When the ship arrived, they asked the captain: "Is Nell dead?"
Of course you can skip to chapter 71 and find out for yourself, or you can read the chapters in order to find out why so many were eager for news of Nell's fate.

The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous young girl of 'not quite fourteen.'  An orphan, she lives with her maternal grandfather in his shop of odds and ends.  Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence with almost no friends her own age.  Her only friend is Kit, an honest boy employed at the shop, and whom she is teaching to write.  Secretly obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her parents did, her grandfather attempts to make Nell a good inheritance through gambling at cards.  He keeps his nocturnal games a secret, but borrows heavily from the evil Daniel Quilp, a malicious, grotesquely deformed, hunchbacked dwarf moneylender...
— From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia