Charles Dickens

I don't think that more than maybe 2 people truely enjoyed the Charles Dickens book that they chose to read this term. I heard mulitple complaints throughout the term from people saying that The Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations was one of the worst books that they had ever read. I'll admit that Great Expectations was more of a pain to read than a pleasure, but it wasn't the worst book I have ever read. It had some good qualities and was better than some, but for some reason, I couldn't wait to finish it. When I really started thinking about what I thought about this book after I read it, I realized exactly why I didn't care for the book. I found that as I read the book it seemed to drag on and on about something that didn't seem interesting, or even important for that matter, which would cause me to have a hard time focusing on the story. I also found that a lot of times when I wanted to know more about something, he never really took the time to explain. I became really confused after about page 100 because I kept wondering how old he was so that I could better understand and better relate to his feelings based on his age. He would tell, of coarse, but it always happened at the beggining of a chapter when you're not really paying attention, and it was always something like, " after four summers passed". I did find myself becoming more interested in the book about 400 pages in, but then the ending was a huge let down. Throughout the whole book he is obsessed and completly crazy about this girl. He was always thinking about her, talking about her, visiting her, crying over her, and all of these other things. I was expecting their relationship to be something bigger than it turned out to be because she was in so much of the story. The whole story seemed more of like a pile of random events rather than one big adventure. I've heard from a lot of people that Charles Dickens is a good writer. I was talking to my Young Womans leader about it and she said that she absolutley loved Oliver Twist, but when she tried to read Tale of Two Cities, she got about half way through it, stopped, and hasn't picked it up since. So maybe there are some good Charles Dickens books out there. Even though I was really dissapointed in this book, I'll probably read another one of his books before I decide that he is an all around terrible writer. What was it that you liked or didn't like about Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations? Will you ever read another Dickens Novel?