" Thanks to its endless retellings in popular culture, I didn't expect this story to hold many surprises. The original (naturally) contains the standard Dickens attention to detail, and more than its share of ruminations, musings, and linguistic diversions. I wouldn't call it a "compact" tale, though, and I marvel (and wonder) at those that read the unabridged work aloud as part of their annual family traditions. All the years of rewrites have taken out some of the sagging portions of the story, and injected new imagery in place of Dickens' original -- modern tales are generally paced better, and Scrooge's transformation at the end happens more publicly and less privately. What I found more interesting, though, was finding those snippets of dialogue or description in the text that I was familiar with from other sources, and realizing how close (or far) those sources deviated from the original material. There's no real surprises here, but it's still a classic. "
— Michael, 2/20/2014