I need good recommendations

Oh. My. God. I loathe....I mega-loathe that man.

For his opinions or his writing style? Obviously his writing is verbose, even garrulous, but it is understandable given the conditions he wrote under. It is that sort of baroque prose I particularly enjoy mucking through. It requires a deep attention span to be sure.

For his opinions or his writing style? Obviously his writing is verbose, even garrulous, but it is understandable given the conditions he wrote under. It is that sort of baroque prose I particularly enjoy mucking through. It requires a deep attention span to be sure.

His writing style. It is an attention span that I simply don't have.

I'm actually starting Dickens' Hard Times right now. I haven't made it even past the introduction, and I've already got a solid twenty or so words jotted down to check the definitions of.

True, reading such books certainly increases your vocabulary. But I find the same thing from non-fiction books, and I find them more enjoyable. In fact, I think I would fine a textbook on geology more enjoyable than Dickens. I really don't know what I have against him, I just remember being miserable in my 9th grade English class.

The sad part is Dickens didn't even write the introduction. However, I'll share with you several quotes that surprised me, and are an indication of how writing can easily transcend the realm of fiction for fiction's sake:

At the same time, it operates as a critique on certain forms of 'useful facts' rather than than to introduce them in any way to the world of the imagination, to concepts of aesthetic pleasure removed from functionality, and to the idea that compassionate understanding of the lives and circumstances of others is of infintely more use than the accumulation of knowledge.

'Blitzer,' he implores, pathetically, 'have you a heart?' 'The circulation, sir,' returned Blitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, 'couldn't be carried on without one. No man, sir, aquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.' 'Is it accessible,' cried Mr. Gradgrind, 'to any compassionate influence?' 'It is accessible to Reason, sir,' returned the excellent young man. 'And to nothing else.'

It does not seem to me to be enough to say of any description that it is the exact truth. The exact truth must be there; but the merit or art in the narrator, is the manner of stating the truth.

...the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast... that we manufacture everything except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to reform a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.

All very astute statements, in my opinion. I especially like the second one, because I feel I can relate to Blitzer in that sense.