I've seen this book as a play and a movie many times. Those other medias were surprisingly true to the original tale. Really the only difference were teh little rambling snippets that obviously had to be cut for time. I really enjoyed most of those because they were filled with snarky musings that we so often forget have always been a part of humanity. We think of people anytime before the last 40 years as being boring prudes. That's not true, the thing that's changed is now there's an avenue to get such ideas into the public hands.
An example: Anyone who's seen any modern version of this story knows it starts out with "Marley was dead as a door nail." It goes from there to Scrooge's business and jumps right in after maybe a few more sentences. The book actually continues for a bit on the topic questioning the logic behind this phrase. "One wonders why a door nail is the deadest kind. One would think a coffin nail to be the most appropriate word to exemplify deadness, but, in their wisdom, our forefathers did not create that phrase. So as it stands, Marley was dead as a door nail." etc.
I do love these tidbits to remind us that our ancestors were just as snarky or sarcastic and asked the same questions, exasperatedly, about how stupid the English language is.
This is not a long book and is a great one to read if you don't have the option of going to see it as a play (and dislike most movie interpretations as I do).
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