Comment by noir_lord

I am - hard to be a life long avid reader in the UK and not read Dickens at some point.

I found his books worth reading (and considered in their context as a reaction against the unfairness of society in his time they are indeed classics) but not something I'd say is always pleasurable reading - he feels like Pratchett without the humour, Pratchett had the rage (you can't read say Small Gods or Jingo and not sense the rage) but was warmer about the human experience.

That said we are specifically talking about English majors here - I wouldn't expect an average member of any English speaking country to do that well on Dickens because that is simply not the modern style of written/spoken English but they are English majors so you would expect the overall level to be higher than the general population as a whole.

In the UK reading is on the decline and what people read has fundamentally changed (I'm not competent to say why but to me at least it feels like we have a horrible streak of anti-intellectualism that runs across society).