Anonymous wrote:It's interesting to see on Goodreads the number of ratings each Dickens novel has:

A Tale of Two Cities 957,000
A Christmas Carol 848,000
Great Expectations 813,000
Oliver Twist 395,000
David Copperfield 242,000
Bleak House 109,000
Hard Times 69,000
Little Dorrit 48,000
Nicholas Nickleby 45,000
Our Mutual Friend 30,000
Pickwick Papers 30,000
The Old Curiosity Shop 22,000
Dombey and Son 16,000
Martin Chuzzlewit 16,000
The Mystery of Edward Drood 12,000
Barnaby Rudge 11,000



Incidentally his most "read" book A Tale of Two Cities is among my least favorite, in part because it just seems less...Dickensian. I've read most but not all of his work. My favorites are Bleak House, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. I haven't read Drood, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son or Old Curiosity Shop.

EDWIN

Great Expectations and David Copperfield

It's interesting to see on Goodreads the number of ratings each Dickens novel has:

A Tale of Two Cities 957,000
A Christmas Carol 848,000
Great Expectations 813,000
Oliver Twist 395,000
David Copperfield 242,000
Bleak House 109,000
Hard Times 69,000
Little Dorrit 48,000
Nicholas Nickleby 45,000
Our Mutual Friend 30,000
Pickwick Papers 30,000
The Old Curiosity Shop 22,000
Dombey and Son 16,000
Martin Chuzzlewit 16,000
The Mystery of Edward Drood 12,000
Barnaby Rudge 11,000



Incidentally his most "read" book A Tale of Two Cities is among my least favorite, in part because it just seems less...Dickensian. I've read most but not all of his work. My favorites are Bleak House, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. I haven't read Drood, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son or Old Curiosity Shop.

Anonymous wrote: I’m a lawyer and I LOVE Bleak House

So?

I’m a lawyer and I LOVE Bleak House

A lot of his writing is just bloated, unfortunately.

Anonymous wrote:I love Great Expectations.

Same.

I love Great Expectations.

Favorite is David Copperfield. The first one I ever read was Tale of Two Cities -- I loved it, but ugh, that is a tough intro to Dickens.

A Christmas Carol is probably my favorite Dickens. I also read Our Mutual Friend at college and was overwhelmed by the length of it. I get that most of his big books were written episodically for weekly publication and I can imagine that was a real treat. But being faced by one ENORMOUS book after another really put me off him. Sorry.

I prefer Trollope over Dickens, but my favorite Dickens novels are A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, and A Christmas Carol.

I love A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.

Wonderful! I hope you like it.

I'm actually re-reading ATOTC now, which I haven't read since I was a child.

Ooh, my favorites are Bleak House and Little Dorrit, OP! Along with Tale of Two Cities.

I have not read Our Mutual Friend, so now I've got to get it...

Thanks for the rec!

Read most but not all of Dickens novels (I haven't yet read Barnaby Rudge or Martin Chuzzlewit or Edwin Drood).

My 3 favorites are Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House and Little Dorrit, with OMF being my favorite of all (Lizzie Hexam is his best female character and it's a great satire of "new money" in the class system). While it's not regarded as one of his best, I also have a soft spot for Hard Times because of my interests in labor history.