What’s the best Dickens to read by someone who’s only ever read A Christmas Carol?

I don’t have much experience with the classics and I’ve heard that Great Expectations reads the most like a modern novel, so that’s prob my first choice.

#booksky

April 09, 2026 - 18:42 UTC

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I enjoyed David Copperfield more than Expectations.

Maybe because Expectations was heavy for me, emotionally
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Great Expectations is a pretty heavy book on a few fronts. It's my favorite Dickens; love the characters and the last third of the book is a dizzying series of great plot twists. At the same time it's long, and a little dense, and I couldn't get into it until I'd broken the ice with Tale of 2 Cities
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Hard Times was the entry point for me. It’s hysterically funny and sharp satire
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A Tale of Two Cities is has relevant today as when it was written.
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For someone new to Dickens this is the one.
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I did see this mentioned too! Ta!
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I love Great Expectations.

You might try a few from Sketches By Boz as well, maybe.
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Or Pickwick Papers, which is fun and a collection of bite-size vignettes
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A tip for whichever you choose: most were written as episodes in a paper/magazine published weekly. The books can be a bit daunting if you try to dive in all at once, so (for me) are best read the same way, as originally intended: chapter by chapter with a break between (e.g. one a day or at night).
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Oh yes I am aware! He was paid by the word, I believe, because of this. So they are a bit wordy.
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Oliver Twist is perfectly readable.
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We were meant to read it in year 7! Safe to say, I did not.
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Mom loved Dickens and urged me to read Great Expectations (her favorite) for years, and I just couldn't get it.

But I found A Tale of Two Cities very approachable and once I'd navigated that successfully the rest of his catalogue was fine.
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Someone else has mentioned that too!
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I’d go with that, simply because I think its brilliant.
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Great Expectations is a good one to go with. It was one of my first.
😉
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That's a good one

So are Bleak House, The Mystery of Edwin Droid, Oliver Twist, and there's a collection of ghost stories ( dramatised on BBC Sounds) that are a good read

There's actually loads ...
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Bleak House is excellent but very much lives up to its title.
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Apologies for butting in but that's a great typo. ☺️
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I like the idea of The Mystery of Edwin Droid! 🤖
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Ooooh I love a ghost story, and dramatised are even better! Keeps my mind busy while I craft.
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I like Great Expectations, it goes on a bit though. I think that's a factor of it not being a book but a long series of short publications in a magazine. I found reading it in big chunks a bit of a chore.
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Sounds like most people recommend reading his novels in short spurts and not how we would read a novel today.
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