The Pickwick papers was a great book, particularly when you figure it was Dickens' first novel. I loved it for it's light heartedness and for the main characters always so very interested in what was going on. Gentleman-dilletantes observing the world and feeling that their observations were important enough to publish. When I first read it the idea of social media was decades away and even the notion of having your own website was a few years away unless you were a scientific researcher on the cutting edge. So at the time I thought of them as sort of silly. Now, of course, HUGE percentages of the population cant seem to go a day without over sharing about the minutest detail of their lives, present company FULLY INCLUDED. :-)

Now that I'm reading Sketches By Boz I can't imagining one of the members of the Pickwick Club lurking nearby, writing feverishly in their notebooks. It's a fun little diversion.