Pickwick Papers

Slightly tough reading at first, very small print and seems too long, but very good if you can plough through the first fifty pages or so.
Only decent thing Dickens has ever written (I've never been able to get beyond the first ten pages of Oliver Twist, at any rate), maybe written before he got completely depressed and serious.
Anyway, it was originally in a serial form, but reads well together anyway. About a certain Mr. Samuel Pickwick, an old, rather rich gentleman who decides to go adventuring with three other members of the Pickwick Club and tends to misadventure more. It perks up after the entry of Sam Weller, his manservant and speaker of some very impressive witticisms ('I only assisted natur, ma'am; as the doctor said to the boy's mother, after he'd bled him to death.'), and he happens to be my favourite character.
Nice read despite Dickens' obsession with marrying widows.