I only got round to Vanity Fair this summer (I read it in case it turned up on the All Souls exam, which it did not) and was very pleasantly surprised. Thackeray's voice can be a bit intrusive sometimes, but once you get used to it, the book moves fairly quickly. And Becky is great fun. I was shocked when I reread Gone With the Wind soon afterward and realised just how much Scarlett O'Hara resembled her (and Melanie resembled Amelia, for that matter).