Charles Dickens

 

is their prog albums or songs inspired by his work?

If someone asked me to recommend a Dickens book, I'd recommend one of the thick ones: it  can be used as a nice paperweight for the desk, or a defensive weapon should you find yourself in need of a dull, blunt object. Then I'd recommend reading other Victorian-era writers like the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy... Making kids read Dickens should be considered a form of torture, and has turned generations of people off literature altogether.

Having said that, I'll go with Christmas Carol, because it's short and has ghosts and there's been some decent films made out of it.

The first paragraph of Oliver Twist should be a lesson on how *not* to write:

"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter."

Translation: Among the nameless buildings in a nameless town, there was a workhouse where Oliver Twist was born.