>tfw don't want to give up on a book, especially a Dickens book because people will think I'm dumb and a pleb for not reading him
>tfw 150 pages in to Nicholas Nickleby and it's so fucking boring
Just drop it. I don't know why people around here are so determined to finish everything even if they dislike it.
>>8034104
the poor disabled kid is the angry old rich guy's son and the rich guy kills himself at the end when he finds out the poor disabled kid is his son and that his son died.
Everything doesn't have to be fun desu
>>8034104
I've never really tried reading a long Dickens. He wrote his novels to make money from serialization, and while they do have merit, I'd rather read books that don't meander and circumambulate pointlessly.
>>8034516
The first thing I did when I got to college was find the biggest, hardest dickenses they had and take them all at the same time in one caffeine-and-coke-fueled blowout weekend.
>>8034123
consumerism
>>8034104
If you really don't enjoy it, it's not worth it. Read another author of that period if you're determined to get some recognition for reading: Proust, Balzac, Dostoyevsky. Foreign is better. Or something obscure in English.
Or just look for authors that won the Nobel prize. Read their famous/winning work, then read something obscure by them. Instant lit cred.
But it's even better if you don't post plebian things on boards like this.
>>8034104
Just finished Great Expectations (first Dickens novel I've read). Easily the most boring book I've ever read. And I don't mind a book being boring if I at least get something out of it. But I didn't really feel he was trying to say anything. It just seemed like a boringly written story of a kid who unexpectedly got rich and then started bitching about being friend zoned. Am I just too stupid to understand it? Can someone explain what I missed?
A farewell to arms was dog shit.
Boring books thread.
Dickens was a horrifically bad writer. The Stephen King of his time.
>>8035298
It's a dark fantasy about class and guilt, moral failure and redemption, and how human behavior is shaped by memory. Many of the major themes center around Dickens's perception of Christian morality.
Honestly, the moral content is a bit trite, but the way in which it is presented is incredibly complex and entertaining. The narrative is probably his best structured; it's distinguished by sudden (but always justified) transformations of character perception and identity, yet still maintains an overarching sense of coherence and dedication to a sense of wholeness.
The characters themselves are all interesting. Dickens mines deep into their psyches and identifies unique philosophies and goals. Then he sets them into conflict with one another like a tactician, never letting incongruous personalities meet and taking care to use one individual to develop another. If you're new to Dickens, pay attention to the way he accentuates common everyday behaviors into physical traits, then entire personalities. The trope of the nostalgic old woman becomes a living corpse, then a bitter narcissist obsessed with correcting her own weaknesses by destroying the humanity of her adopted daughter.
The prose and images are evocative and true. He was a probably a genius
>>8034104
Nobody will think you're a patrician for reading Dickens either.
honestly, only irredeemable plebs can't into dickens. if you can't finish one of his novels, just give up on lit.
>>8035317
spot the memer
