The Best [Victorians] of 2007

Amidst the flurry of 'Top 10' and 'Best Of' book lists that the end of the year inevitably generates (and after reading several dismissals of Victorian novels in various insistently modernist blogs), it's nice to see some people proclaiming how much fun is to be had with Dickens and George Eliot (both via The Millions):

From Bookdwarf: "First, I'll get George Eliot's Middlemarch out of the way. It's simply one of the best books I've ever read. I expect to read this again in a few years and still feel the same, it's that good. It's the kind of book where you're not certain you can make it past the first 100 pages, but what a treat if you do!"

From novelist Jess Row: "I'd be lying if I didn't say that my favorite books read in 2007 were Little Dorrit and Daniel Deronda. But almost as much fun as the novels themselves were the copious endnotes (in the Penguin and Modern Library editions, respectively). I wonder: in a hundred years, will any novels from our era get the same treatment? And if so, what will the endnotes 'say?'"