I have tried many times to enjoy Dickens.
He was far too long-winded for me to ever enjoy any of it. Same with Nathaniel Hawthorne and "The Scarlet Letter"- a worse pile of old wank I have never encountered.

That said, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" are very readable, and they were written on 1897 and 1818, respectively. So it's not just because that was the style of the period- it was because Dickens and Hawthorne were shit.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:00, 1 reply)

I have to admit that I'm not such a huge Dickens fan as all that.
There're times when he plainly was just being a hack. Yet I'm not sure I buy the readability objection. Granted his reputation - and not only in English (Dostoyevsky was influenced by him, for example) it's hard to sustain the idea that his writing is poor.

Hawthorne is someone with whom I'm not at all familiar. I love Melville, though, and I believe they were neighbours - so that's close...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 17:52, closed)