In reply to GravitySucks:
+1 for Great Expectations, one of his mature, great works, and compratively short, so a bit less intimidating for the unsure. Personally not keen on Hard Times, starts well - some good satire on education (which certain Education Ministers seem to have taken as an instruction manual), but gets a bit moralistic.
My absolute favourite Dickens though is Bleak House. It is long but incredibly readable and interesting - great characters and incredibly evocative; with the saga of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce a reminder that then, as now, the legal system works to benefit lawyers not those directly involved in cases. David Copperfield is good too - again long but rather fun.
Until I read those three novels, I had the second-hand impression that Dickens was a writer of sentimental potboilers, with character's whose role could be inferred from their names. Perhaps that is the case for some of his works, but at his best, he is among the best.