Dickens

So last night, I read my first bit of Dickens. Ever.
Yes, I somehow managed to get through 4 years of English literature without ever picking up a work by Charles Dickens. Slowly let that sink in. Several of my fellow former students of English were baffled and appalled when I told them. But somehow I managed to evade him all that time.
And I actually took a course called 'The long nineteenth century'  which dealt with nineteenth century literature (and a bit before and after: it started with the Romantics and went on a little bit past 1900, hence the 'long' nineteenth century), but there was no Dickens in that. There was some Austen, and Bronte, and Hardy, and Dracula, but no Dickens.
And anyway, I've never really been that interested in Charles Dickens. I watched some Oliver Twist adaptations, of course, and A Christmas Carrol whenever it is around, but to actually read anything? Somehow Dickens struck me as a pompous Englishman feeling rather too good about himself, possibly because most people who persist in telling you that they've read all of Dickens are pompous Englishmen who feel rather too good about themselves.
But as I am in the spirit of 'reading the classics', I decided to give Dickens a chance. I've been pleasantly surprised before, I hoped to be so again. I got A Tale of Two Cities for my birthday, and Oliver Twist and Hard Times for Sinterklaas (all in the beautiful Penguin hardcover cloth bound editions, which make me want to re-buy a lot of books I already have). I decided to start in the latter, as I didn't really know anything about that one, and I felt it was best to start with as clean a sheet as possible (prejudice-free). I read the first three chapters last night, and really, it was not what I expected. Man, that guy is funny. Also, he has these long flowing sentences which run on for about 10 lines but still make sense and don't need you to go back and re-read them again. Which is one of those things I love in Ian McEwan's novels (and many others, Watership Down also has several of those nice long descriptive ones), and I have to keep reminding myself that Dickens wrote them first, even if I am the one who has first read all of McEwan and is now starting on the nineteenth century guy.
Also, you have to feel for those poor people who had to wait for the next chapters to come out every week, as Dickens's novels were first published in magazines. It's like watching a TV-series weekly, instead of just getting a whole season at once, as we're now so used to doing. Actually having to wait for the next instalment of something: how many of us are actually still capable of doing so? Might be a nice experiment to do that with one of his novels, but not this one, as I'm far to curious to know what will happen next!