'There's nothing better than a good book' 1

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read.” (Groucho Marx)

This summer I read my first book - a very long novel - on a Kindle.
As a consequence I’m a convert! No more cutting down trees to feed my reading habit – I’m happy to read only e-ink from now on…
If I tell you that despite having one of the slowest, dullest beginnings you’ll find in fiction, and that it ends with an essay of interminable boredom, this is nonetheless (justly!) one of the most acclaimed of nineteenth century novels, can you guess what it is?
A further clue: it contains one of the most convincing death scenes to be found between the covers of a book, concerning a character who is killed off twice by his author.