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Now that's an interesting insight. It suddenly occurs to me that the person I know who likes Dickens most (he dresses up and performs in the San Francisco Dickens Fair every Christmas)... is a former actor. He does, indeed, love being the Dickens characters.

I'm annoyed though that I can't imagine it as being read aloud. Maybe I'll start by trying that. If it doesn't work, I'll follow your advice.

I've never had much taste for Dickens, either.

I'm reading David Lodge's Consciousness and the Novel which devotes a chapter to Dicken's celebrity. He attributes to Jane Smiley the insight that Dickens was "a true celebrity (maybe the first true celebrity in the modern sense)". Being the first, Dickens lacked a template for coping with the problems it brought him. So there was that.

Lodge also observes "His imagination was exceptionally chaste. ... His heroines are either childlike or saintly, presexual or asexual ..." More insight arrives in a later chapter concerning Howards End, in which Forster defends his head-hopping by invoking Dickens:

What is really crucial, Forster says, is "the power of the writer to bounce the reader into accepting what he says ... Look how Dickens bounces us in Bleak House ... Logically, Bleak House is all to pieces, but Dickens bounces us, so that we do not mind the shiftings of the viewpoint."

If the viewpoint tour is confined to childlike, saintly, presexual, and asexual one wonders whether all that bouncing on Dicken's knee might not become a trifle stifling. I'm still not sure what it is between me and Dickens, but Lodge seems to have at least provided me with a starting point.

I had to read it in grade eight and that was enough to put me off Dickens ...

I love Dickens but I would rather someone honestly hate Dickens than fake it. Not every book is for everyone.

Get the surgery as soon as possible. Dickens is astounding. I'm glad you recognize it's your problem ;)

Manybooks wrote: "I had to read it in grade eight and that was enough to put me off Dickens ..."

I cannot imagine assigning this to someone in 8th Grade.