Understanding Words

Can you imagine reading a book and looking up about five words every page? After awhile you really lose the joy of reading and since I don't want to lose that joy I am wondering if anybody could help put me on the right track towards finding a solution. If I have a book in my possesion I cherish it and treat it with respect and want to get at the meaning of what the author has written. It gets to a point of despair where from reading fifty pages a day, I find myself not even being able to physically lift the book; yet all the while my mind is distressed at wanting to understand the author. A passion that eventually seems to become a tragedy!

People are always understandably saying that to improve vocabulary you need to read new words using a dictionary and to pay attention to how those words are being used; and from there to keep on exposing yourself to those words until you finally understand them. That's all alright, but is there another way to understand a word without looking it up in a dictionary? Is it possible to come across a word and figure out its meaning, maybe by noticing the arrangement of the letters themselves? From this I concluded to begin studying affixes, yet is that all? Is there nothing else to understand a word without the help of a dictionary? What about the letters themselves, what makes an "a" or an "f". Do the letters themselves have meaning and by placing them in a particular order can their meaning be deduced? I looked up "alphabet" in the dictionary and it said, "the set of letters used in writing a language arranged in a conventional order". Was the "conventional order" that of reason, or of a happy-go-lucky fashion?

The man himself that I'm talking about is Charles Dickens. I'm an admirer of him and I like what is written on his tombstone in Poets's Corner, Westminster Abbey, "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world". I greatly respect Dickens and I'm thinking that if he sympathised with these people and wrote their sorrows, then he must have also written it for them to read. I think about the common men and women of England during his time and the moments when these people would be overjoyed to read his words, after having been freshly printed in the morning paper. I realize that the times between ours and the Victorian period are different and although I notice this I also notice those common Victorians who have little education and still devouring the words of Dickens. So you might imagine the bit of jealousy I feel at not being able to do the same. That feeling of despair I get every time I come across a word I don't know and my mind overpowering me to pick up that dictionary; I'm soon exausted and lay the book down. I can't just lay the book down, I've got to understand Dickens and what he's got to say. I've got to feel the emotions of his pen as it nimbly inked his thoughts across the pages. I don't expect that someone out there can give me the definite answer, though I'd greatly appreciate anyone who could start me on my way, and although I write my suspicions about there being another way to understand words, maybe there isn't. Maybe it's just what it is, picking up that dictionary and straining your mind until enlightenment is achieved. Many thanks to anyone who spent their time reading my tragedy, and many more for anyone's advice.
Stephen