Help me with Dickens, please!

[CurlewKate]

I feel as if I ought to like Dickens. And I have tried for 40 years. I love long books, I love a classic. And when I've finished one, I enjoy it in retrospect! But it takes me YEARS to build up to another one.

I want to give him one more chance- so which shall it be? I've read Oliver Twist, Great Expectations (my favorite so far) David Copperfield, and Bleak House. And A Christmas Carol, of course.

Choose for me!

Dickens is awful and life is too short and depressing enough without him!
(Edit to say: the Muppet Christmas Carol is the exception to this rule!)

A Tale of Two Cities

I would recommend Our Mutual Friend. It is Byzantine in its plotting and cast of characters but then that's Dickens for you. It was his last novel and there is a sense of melancholy that runs through it.
There was also a rather lovely TV adaptation on the BBC some years ago.

I'm with Cattery on A Tale of Two Cities. Breathtaking

The first Dickens I read, apart from A Christmas Carol, was Our Mutual Friend. I began watching the BBC classic serial (1976 version, great cast) and couldn't wait for the next instalments. That happened with quite a few classic books!

I'm torn.

For me, A Tale of Two Cities is one of the finest books in the English language.

But if you've read those four five titles and are still stuck in "I feel I ought to like him" rather than actually liking him, then I'm with @Greybeardy : just stop. It's OK. He's a particular taste, and seemingly not yours. Spend your valuable time on other writers.

Also, I found The Old Curiosity Shop, Hard Times and Barnaby Rudge dire.

I do agree about the fantastic TV adaptation of Our Mutual Friend. Also Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Very well worth watching, and less of a commitment.

Tey reading him serially a chapter a week, like his original readers. I am rather fond of the Pickwick Papers but YMMV.

I haven't read any of the large books, only seen TV adaptations. I did Tale of Two Cities for GCSE and I loved it. Definitely read that. I've read a Christmas Carol and the Chimes. And that's it.

A Tale of Two Cities is my all-time favourite book and I re-read it every couple of years.
However, my friend couldn’t get on with it at all and I do agree that life is too short to persevere with books you don’t enjoy.

I listened to an abridged radio 4 version of Dombey and Son last year and would highly recommend it. Good story and accessible.

I disagree although some are more readable than others.

I love Bleak House. It's very long and you might want a notepad to keep track of the plots and sub plots but there are some wonderful characters and the various plots eventually knit together.

Now that's one that I gave up on.

Don't sweat it, you're allowed to not like Dickens and not find Jane Austen hilarious.

....Ducks for cover....

I don't really like Dickens. It sounds like you've done your duty, so you could swerve the rest and read Wilkie Collins instead? Way more exciting.

If you feel you have to perservere with Dickens, it's probably worth reading Hard Times for all the Gradgrind stuff, because it's a cultural reference that comes up a lot.

OK-A Tale of Two Cities seems to be winning. Helps that I have a copy, so I can start tonight!

I'm happy to abandon books/writers I don't enjoy (looking at you, Tolstoy!) but with Dickens it feels like me not him, so I'm giving him one last go. Wish me luck. I'm also going to start my 427th reread of Jane Austen, so I have something to leaven the bread, so to speak!

Lots of people enjoy Dickens but if you don't, that's fine. You're not 'supposed' to like Dickens.

There are millions of books, just read one you'll like when you're reading it, not 'in retrospect'.

I'm most of the way through A Tale of Two Cities at the moment. I agree that it is masterly, and I am enjoying it hugely. But I think I find it a little bit less accessible than most other of his books . Partly this is because there are more references that, while they would have been readily understood at the time, require a quick google to get on top of now. But it is also because his use of extended metaphor and other rather abstract devices when conveying destiny and/or popular tides of thought and action is sometimes quite hard going.

It is still a massively brilliant book, though. I love the many symmetries and contrasts he draws between British and French oppression and unrest.

I have always thought of Bleak House as Dickens' most masterful and wonderful book. They are all brilliant though. Apart perhaps from Pickwick Papers. Haven't read that one because it sounds a bit tiresome.

I don't think Jane Austen is meant to be 'hilarious' - I've never heard anyone suggest that. She has a subtle observational humour that is not meant to be laugh out loud. I often hear this as a criticism of Shakespeare though. I enjoy Austen and Shakespeare for more than the humour though.

As to the OP's question - Nicholas Nickleby

Great Expectations is also my favourite.

My favourite is Nicholas Nickelby, but I love all his books.

I found A Tale of Two Cities hard to get into - the opening section is rather long and dull - but after that it gets really good.

I absolutely loved Dombey and Son

Martin Chuzzelwit is good, just with one boring section in the middle

I didn’t enjoy Nicholas Nickleby

I love dickens, especially Barnaby Rudge. But it's not for everyone. I'd give one you fancy a go and just stop if it's not enjoyable.

I'm currently reading The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. Absolutely love it. Less quirky than dickens but fabulously well drawn characters.

David Copperfield is more like Great Expectations so that might be a good one. Bleak House is amazing but very much a labour of love. Little Dorrit is v g. I think A Tale of Two Cities is excellent but it left less of a lasting impression on me in terms of characters than the ones above. I see it as one of his very serious more high brow books vs the character-based, low life and artful dodger back streets London books which are my favourites.

Life's too short to work on liking something if you don't. The triple-decker Victorian novel isn't everyone's cup of tea, albeit I enjoy Bleak House and Great Expectations, and the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities are strikingly beautiful. The Cambridge-Leavisites lambasted Dickens as being too middlebrow for their tastes.

I've just re-read Hardy's Tess: big mistake during a spate of the sort of grey days guaranteed to put me in a low mood. Some of these Victorian narratives are really grim.

I'd rather read early twentieth century Edwardians and modernists, including and especially some of the women authors barely heard of today. May Sinclair, Storm Jameson, Dorothy Parker, Ethel Lina White, Rose Macaulay, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, E M Forster, H G Wells, H.D., Arnold Bennett, Elizabeth Bowen, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh (Vile Bodies is a very entertaining read, with a fun film adaptation called Bright Young Things) - all of these are writers I'd pick up before Dickens.

Read several dickens and quite liked them but found them a bit try hard and a bit much, with all the “comedy” names etc. But the first time I actually really loved one was listening to an unabridged audiobook of one (can’t remember which). Just felt like it all came across so much better narrated than read.

OP - Don't worry if you can't get into Tale of Two Cities. I've always had trouble with it and I am a huge Dickens fan. Ones that are easier to start with and also good, in my opinion, are David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Old Curiosity Shop. I love the way his stories start with a lot of seemingly unrelated characters and then as the book progresses, the pace increases and all the pieces fall into place. I also enjoy the atmosphere of London (and elsewhere) life and atmosphere at that time.