I've actually never read anything from him, but I was thinking of checking out a Christmas carol for the holiday season

>>7366213

Dickens is great. Maybe he gets slighted around here because of how prolific a writer he was and how wordy (as opposed to dense, subtle, etc.) his writing is. He was a master at creating characters, and of giving them memorable names. He was also influential in influencing real-world concerns (i.e., the terrible child-labor conditions he experienced). And his writing is as cozy as anything around.

>>7366213
Tale of Two Cities has an extremely powerful last 100 pages, the rest are filler.

Christmas Carol is a masterpiece.

Oliver Twist became an excellent musical.

His sympathy for the working class is admirable.

Otherwise he is a typical sentimentalist victorian author getting paid by the word, who absolutely does not deserve to be pushed on hs students as part of the canon. Youd be better off reading Walter Scott.

>>7366243
>giving them memorable names
JK Rowling tier skill.
>influential in influencing real-world concerns
This is a bad thing for an artist.
>And his writing is as cozy as anything around.
Kafka would like a word with you.

>>7366213
>Why does noone talk about Dickens on here? Is he considered a hack?

/lit/ hivemind prefers the dense and philosophic to the straight and sentimental

I liked Oliver Twist.

> Master Bates

>>7366261
>We must distinguish between ‘sentimental’ and ‘sensitive’. A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother’s Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at the Traviata

>>7366213
>reading century old tomes

Sorry m8 you are in the wrong place

He's an exceptional novelist but not an incredible artist

I think everyone should read A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Bleak House in that order atleast, those are great novels by anyone standards. Wordy yes, sentimental, painfully yes, but his talent for detail and humour are rarely matched for his time. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Joyce, and practically every author after him either admired him greatly or were greatly influenced by him.

I like Balzac more.

Balzac's Paris is Dickens' London is Rowlings' Hogwarts

u know it's true

We patrushuns mostly read literature as philosophy since we are not disciplined enough for actual systematic thought. Dickens doesn't fit the bill.

Bleak House and David Copperfield are his strongest novels. If you're going to read Dickens be sure to read these two.

>>7366396
why in that order?

>>7366509
My own personal experience really, Dickens was my first 'classic' author I read, and his shorter novels are easier to digest especially considering Bleak House has over 50 major and minor characters, two narrorators, and I don't know how many main plots and subplots altogether. There's some flow charts or graphs out there that can better illustrate it I guess.

>>7366529
thanks friend!

>>7366251
>improving working conditions for children is a bad thing

>>7366270
Ayy nabokov lectures
I see you took good notes, pinecone