Dickens for me stands a bit a part as a master of the weave of a plot. Emblematic and mostly straightforward characters bounce around to surprising and delightful ends. I’m a bit concerned for the future of Dickens though - while the stories he tells are likely timeless, the style is a bit overwrought for the current day. And so reading is just a bit of a chore, for less of a reward than many contemporaries - Elliot, Melville, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all provide much more to chew on. I enjoyed Great Expectations a bit less than A Tale of Two Cities, but that might just be because in retrospect, I think Dickens is best when read by a precocious young reader still figuring things out. These days I’m probably merely cocious.