I'm amazed that anyone can find Dickens dreary. Along with Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys, he's one of the most evocative writers in the English language - just read the opening page of Great Expectations (Ours was the marsh country down by the river). I think that anyone who has any aspirations to be a good writer should study Dickens' use of grammar, construction, characterisation (some of the most memorable in literature) and, most of all, his wonderful sense of humour.