What the Dickens? Oprah chooses 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'Great Expectations' as her next Book Club picks

Image Credit: Daniel Boczarski/FilmMagic.com; London Stereoscopic Company/Getty ImagesAfter the amends-making choice of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Oprah Winfrey has settled on another author whose work consists largely of social novels with extensive casts of characters. Only this one died 140 years ago. Two classic novels by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, will be receiving the coveted Oprah’s Book Club sticker, so if you only pretended to read them in high school English class, now is your chance to read them for real. Oprah will announce the selection during today’s show, which also features her reunion with Franzen following their 2001 Book Club-related falling-out.

This isn’t the first time Oprah has gone with a tried-and-true classic over a new release: Previous selected titles include Anna Karenina, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and East of Eden. The two novels are being released together in a special paperback edition by Penguin, but they are also available very cheaply in e-book format. But the question is: Was this the best of picks, or was it the worst of picks? Are you excited to (re-)read Dickens’ novels, or are you afraid they’ll be as stale as Miss Havisham’s wedding cake?