More Dickens!

Article says Charles Dickens' books mean more now than ever:

Food banks, the lack of state support for children’s services and the attack on the health service has made the work of Charles Dickens more relevant than ever before, according to the author’s acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin.

Tomalin, who wrote Charles Dickens: A Life in 2011, told the Radio Times that Dickens’s focus on the parlous living conditions of the urban poor was just as important more than 200 years after his birth. “Dickens is very relevant at the moment in England. Because we are producing Dickensian conditions again,” she told the Radio Times. 

Not sure if any social/political reason is why you should read Dickens, but as someone for whom Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities are in his Top 10 and it's looking like David Copperfield is currently on its way as well, I think you should simply read more Dickens because its pretty great.