My father owns a leatherback gold trim of David Copperfield and i swore i saw Oliver Twist somewhere in my closet of equipment and junk all over the place. Dickens is tough but for someone stuck to reading the bible and reciting it during 3-5 grade, i was to read ridiculous books at a very young age >_>
I mean... yeah, it's not about the difficulty of the words at all. It's about having read my last Dickens as a sophomore in high school, so I couldn't get as deep an understanding of it then as I can now. The other thing is that I really hate reading self-insertion Mary Sue fanfiction, even by someone like Dickens. That bit with
Charles Darnay and the girl who looks exactly like the actress he was lusting after at the time... not cool at all, man, not cool.
Dickens always makes me feel sort of like my chains are being yanked. He isn't the most honest writer in certain respects.
Shakespeare has always been tough for me to read too... I've probably been spoiled by frequent visits to see plays performed at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Reading suits literary analysis of his work well, but it's never had the same impact/comprehensibility for me when read, as opposed to performed. Speaking of Twain too, I've been meaning to check out the Memoir he set to publish 100 years after his death.
Oh, and please don't hold up the play on my account. Besides, it's a good incentive for me to read, since it's been sitting, bookmarked, in my bedside book pile for most of the Winter.
Ah, I understand Shakespeare much better when it's read, and I usually find it more moving because I can hear and see the actors in my mind, rather than sometimes watching them and thinking "Ugh, this person doesn't know what he's doing." Somehow, the play seems much more fluid and lively to me in its written form. I don't really know why, either.
Well, I'll compute the time you'll need to be done by soon >_> Just keep an eye out on the thread as it moves around, hey?