Number Ten: A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is both one of the most popular and wonderful books ever written.  Admittedly, when I started this book I was very unenthusiastic about reading it.  Having just finished The Three Musketeers, which was exciting and easy to read, I was not excited about reading a much more poetically written book with an immensely more complicated plot line.  Even after starting this book, I still found this book extremely difficult to follow, but when I had finally gotten to somewhere near the middle of the book, I was hooked.  At that point, the book was utterly captivating and had one of the most important messages in any book that I have ever read.
The extremely clear message in this book was, cheesy as it seems, Love.  Now Love is an extremely common theme in books, but I have never seen it portrayed in such an amazing way as this.  One of the main characters of this book, a man named Sydney Carton, appeared at the beginning of the book to be relatively pathetic, a man with no course in life who spent all of his time drinking.  This man was in love with a woman who loved another man.  She married the other man and Sydney accepted it.  A few years passed and the woman's family was drawn into the revolution going on in Paris.  The woman's husband was accused of a crime and sentenced to death.  Sydney took the man's place at the guillotine.  He died not for the woman who he loved but rather for the man who she was in love with.  Now that is True Love.
In the many books I have read, I have never seen a picture of love which measures us to this one.  To stand in line waiting for death knowing that a single word could save your life yet standing there nevertheless because it is the only way to save the heart of the woman you love is incredible.  Many people would have taken advantage of the demise of his rival but Sydney didn't do that.  Just before he died Sydney was able to say truly "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is to a far, far better rest i go to, than I have ever known.
This book is undoubtedly one of my favorites.  It is true that I did not enjoy the first half of this book because of the complex language, but the second half of the book infinitely more than makes up for the first half.  The complex language does make it difficult to understand and I would definitely not recommend this book to younger people, but if someone is old enough to understand it then they should definitely recommend that they read this book ASAP - it really is one of the best books that I have ever read.

Begging you to read this book,
Jodath