Thackeray's Vanity Fair

In the first chapter of Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp throws Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary'--a gift from Miss Jemima--out of the coach on which she's traveling away from Miss Pinkerton's awful school, Chiswick Mall:

But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp flung the book back into the garden.

This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror. 'Well, I never,'--said she...

Someone I love told me that if I read Vanity Fair there would be times when I couldn't stop laughing. "I don't know that I'd read it again," she said, "but I'm glad I read it when I was young." 

I began reading Thackeray's masterwork early this morning--5 a.m.--and didn't put it down until dawn, 7:02 a.m. when the light was just starting to make its prison escape. Then I closed the book up by putting it down, needing to get on with my own life.