Love to read. At least one novel a week. Guess I just like more contemporary 'stuff'.
Dickens is unsurpassed when it comes to creation of characters and the Tale has memorable ones. Who can forget the scene where the disbarred lawyer, Sidney Carlton, is sitting doing the work for the law firm he is the brains of with wet towels on his head to cool it off because all that thinking makes his head hot. And the theme of giving one's life for another is timeless.
One could have put just about every Dickens work on this list as far as I am concerned.