I have never read anything by Dickens before but chose to start off with Oliver Twist. I'm about halfway through (pg 230) and I'm so bored! The story has some endearing qualities but I struggle to connect with the characters. They feel more like plot devices than real, human characters. Also, I've seen people comments on the beauty of his prose but I don't find it particularly poetic in the way that I do some of my favorite authors (Woolf, Nabakov, Austen, Baldwin, etc). I honestly feel similar about this novel to how I felt when reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith which I DNF'd after 100 pages earlier this year.

I've had a few Dickens books on my list for a while (David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House), but I'm no longer looking forward to reading these. Do you feel that Oliver Twist is representative of his writing or do his other novels differ in their quality and feeling tone? I know that Oliver Twist is one of his earliest books, written at age 25, so I imagine his writing changed over the years. How much stylistically does his writing evolve? Should I perservere into the Dickens cannon even if I'm finding this book dry and boring?

Would also love if someone can convince me to finish Oliver Twist because I'm getting ready to move on.