Charles Dickens

  If I say those two words out loud, I immediately get mental images.

 Coal dust

 firelight

 snow

 queerly dressed Victorian people  

  I like Charles Dickens style of writing, and I needed a book to wade through, so I thought I'd tackle one that I'd never read before.    'The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club' or more simply, 'The Pickwick Papers', was what I decided on. 
  I checked it out of our town library,  (which by the way, is a queer library architecturally.  Not a good kind of queerness, either)   and started reading it late last night.  Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour but the first paragraph proved daunting. 

THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

THE PICKWICK CLUB

Chapter 1

THE PICKWICKIANS

"The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transaction of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discriminations, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted."  

  And that, my highly esteemed friends, was only the first paragraph!  It then launched into an even more formal and flowery entry, which went on for three pages!!!   I wasn't sure what I'd gotten myself into.

  But I'm lovin' it.  Actually.  Somehow it comes alive, eventually.    It's also fun to read out loud. 

Try it! 

  Read it in your most pompous voice, tack on a British accent, try not to stumble over 'multifarious',  and try not to grin too hard.  It'll spoil the pompous tone.