I adore A Christmas Carol with a mad passion, but it only makes his other works all the more awful in comparison. Especially Great Expectations, which I hate and had to read three friggin' times in school, thanks to being a military kid and changing schools a lot. Pip's wimpy, self-involved angst worked my last nerve in ways any veteran of skirmishes with badfic writers would recognize.

I suppose one good thing came out of the experience. My own teen queen tendency toward purple prose and melodrama was severely curtailed by my run-ins with Mr. Dickens. Though my taste for minimalism didn't make Steinbeck or Hemingway any more palatable. But then, I'm not really impressed with Man Pain, no matter how it's dressed.

Oh, man, you're making me itch to dump books on you now. *G* Mom read mythology to us like it was fairy tales, and certainly the two aren't unrelated. I'd say check out the Folklore section of your local bookstore, they should have at least one book each of Nordic mythology and Celtic (probably a lot of Celtic, given it's an "in" mythology right now). I think someone just pubbed a translated compilation of Icelandic sagas, but I haven't read it yet to say how much good it would do you in terms of the basics. If you're in college (can't remember if you are), you might also see if there are any folklore classes offered and track down the professor to see what books s/he recommends for getting started.