It Was the Best of Times Forget the lecture hall. A Dickens reading group fulfills one freshman's great expectations. A kettle whistles. Knocks sound on the door.
Students toss around pillows and find comfortable spaces to sit.
She settles down on the soft blue rug, adjusts her glasses and looks up at us from behind her low coffee table, the only podium from which she can be assured she has her students' complete attention. Fog everywhere. . . . And suddenly we are there, wrapped up in the cold, white mist that blankets London, with the echo of loud voices, the clippety-clop of hooves, the splash of puddles and the faraway chime of a clock. Welcome to the Charles Dickens reading group, where eight freshmen and sophomores grasp a mug of English tea in one hand and a novel firmly in the other. It's an entirely different side of Stanford from the lecture halls where I normally learn.