I'm going to put in a good word for David Copperfield.

I definitely haven't read enough Dickens. My parents had a hardback set when I was a kid (my sister has them now), but they looked so terribly forbidding that I never summoned up the nerve to read any of them!


Is A Prayer For Owen Meany worth reading? I know absolutely nothing about it.

I'm probably not the best person to ask about John Irving books, as I find him a manipulative (and mawkish) writer. But I know that many, many people love his books.