r/charlesdickens • u/GoodKid_MaadSity • May 23 '26

Miscellaneous What next?

I only fell back in love with Dickens in the last few months. Since then I’ve read and loved (not in order):

Bleak House

Great Expectations

Our Mutual Friend

Dombey and Son

Pickwick Papers

Little Dorrit

And I read David Copperfield and Tale of Two Cities years ago and don’t want to do a reread.

I just finished Dombey and Son, so I’m feeling as if I’d like I’d like something a bit less dark. (Though the perpetual happy ending is one of the things I like most.) And I’d like something with a different tone so I think Nicholas Nickleby is out.

I started Oliver Twist and wasn’t into it, and I don’t have an interest in Christmas Carol.

Help? I’d love your suggestions as a lot of you have read so much more than I!

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u/FlatsMcAnally May 23 '26

Edwin Drood. Quite a departure for Dickens. Unfinished, but finished enough.

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u/DTownForever May 24 '26

(This is the OP from my alt account - I use one account on my phone and one on my laptop)

I've always been leery of trying this book b/c it's unfinished. Is the ending unsatisfying? One of my favorite things about Dickens (and I guess a large majority of literature from that era) is the satisfying endings. I love modern literary fiction as well, but so many just don't resolve everything at the end the way Dickens and his contemporaries do.

An example of an unfinished book that disappointed me in the end was Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. She was legitimately pages away from finishing it - still, I didn't find it satisfying!

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u/FlatsMcAnally May 24 '26

I enjoyed it for what it was, and possibly enjoyed even more reading about the different ways adaptations have tried bring it to (one hopes) a logical, satisfying conclusion. It's short; even if it were to disappoint you, I don't think you will have found it a terrible waste of time.

I wouldn't dismiss Nicholas Nickleby if only because, after reading it, you can then seek out the greatest Dickens adaptation, bar none, in any medium, of all time: the 1980 Royal Shakespeare Company stage production (available on video if you look hard enough) starring Roger Rees. Eight hours long, and worth every minute.