# Favourite Dickens work?



## Cloo (Jan 25, 2012)

Too many to them all in a poll,  I fear, but with his bicentenary fast approaching, I think a thread is due.

I'm mid-way through Nicholas Nickleby and rather sad that I've almost run out of his novels to read (I haven't read his shorter pieces, 'Sketches by Boz', and I don't think I've read Barnaby Rudge), so I may have just to re-read the ones I read longest ago, which would probably mean starting with Hard Times.

For me, though, Great Expectation remains the one to beat as a great read, with Bleak House not far behind. Dombey and Sons, I enjoyed a lot, though it's not his most rated, ditto Our Mutual Friend. A Tale of Two Cities is pretty different from his others, and also excellent and I think could be set for a re-read before too long.

Yeah, I know he's given to sentimentality, and a little predictability sometimes, but as Nickleby is reminding me, he's a joy to read.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 25, 2012)

For me, his best work is Hard Times.  Or Bleak House.

This year, I do intend to read some of the ones I've missed before.


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## Bakunin (Jan 25, 2012)

danny la rouge said:


> For me, his best work is Hard Times.



There can be only one decent work called 'Hard Times', IMHO:







I have soken, therefore the debate is concluded.


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## temper_tantrum (Jan 25, 2012)

'Our Mutual Friend' and/or 'Bleak House'.

Edit: I've tried to read 'A Tale Of 2 Cities' about 3 or 4 times, and never got beyond the first quarter. I don't know quite why, it just doesn't do it for me.


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## Mrs Magpie (Jan 25, 2012)

I like Nicolas Nickleby best. I know it's not considered his best, but I care about the characters most in that one.


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## Bakunin (Jan 25, 2012)

On a more serious note than my previous post, Charles Dickens was a passionate advocate of penal reform. After inspecting the then-new EasternState Penitentiary near Philadelphia he denounced solitary confinement and the madatory rule of silence imposed on prisoners as being inhumane. He was also opposed to capital punishment after having witnessed public executions and campaigned for its abolition.

Though being an old lag himself might have had summat to do with that.


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## temper_tantrum (Jan 25, 2012)

Has anyone read Claire Tomalin's biography yet? I've got it sitting on my 'to read' bookshelf. Interested in people's views ...


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## Mrs Magpie (Jan 25, 2012)

temper_tantrum said:


> Has anyone read Claire Tomalin's biography yet? I've got it sitting on my 'to read' bookshelf. Interested in people's views ...


Her biography of Ellen Ternan was brilliant and I have no doubt the Dickens one will be just as good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Woman-Ternan-Charles-Dickens/dp/0140121366


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## Cloo (Jan 25, 2012)

temper_tantrum said:


> Has anyone read Claire Tomalin's biography yet? I've got it sitting on my 'to read' bookshelf. Interested in people's views ...


I'd forgotten about that one... I loved her Pepys biog.


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## redsquirrel (Jan 26, 2012)

temper_tantrum said:


> 'Our Mutual Friend' and/or 'Bleak House'.


Snap, my two favourites too.


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## DotCommunist (Jan 26, 2012)

Tale of Two Cities. It's great reading the tragedy of an aristo set faced with the inevitability of a reckoning in full swing


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## Balbi (Jan 26, 2012)

I love thw Mystery of Edwin Drood, but I can never get to the end


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