Great Expecations: Thoughts on Reading

1. Overall, I actually liked the book. At the beginning I was thinking, okay this could be good, but as the first stage went on Pip started to become such an annoying character that I didn't think I would be able to get through it. When the second stage started the writing was just so dry I just could not get into the book. As the third stage was coming closer and eventually came the plot started to pick up and get interesting with the arrival of Magwitch, and I was more excited to read. I thought the book was a good, it was just lengthy and hard to understand. I think Dickens is a good author, but he just makes too many metaphors at times. I like metaphors, but when there are four of them in one sentance it becomes confusing and hard to figure out what the sentance is actually about. I liked the desciptions of the settings, it made it easier to imagine. I has sympathy for Joe and Biddy because they were so sweet and happy and Pip was just so mean to them it made me sad. I actually guessed that the convict would be Pip's benefactor. I have been saying since Pip got his expecations. I was hoping that Pip would realize that he didn't need money and clothes to be happy in the end, so that came true. I did use Sparknotes, but I didn't read ahead and find out what happens.
2. I honestly read the whole book, and I did all the reading assignments on time. I would usually know that I would need to spend 20-25 minutes a night reading Great Expectations or doing the journal assignment. I  would always read and annotate at the same time. Usually this is the last homework I would do because then I could go straight to sleep. After I read and annotated, I would go on Sparknotes for the particular chapters and just make sure I understood everything correctly. I knew that if I fell behind in my reading it would be really hard to catch up, so I kept up the whole time. During the second stage I found it hard to find things to annotate, but there were some things I found occasionally. I think that if I had done my reading earlier in the day I might have understood it better because by the time I got around to reading I was really tired, but otherwise it wasn't that bad because I had Sparknotes as a back up in case I was really confused. I found that since I kept up with the daily reading it wasn't really a problem to stay with it because I was used to the daily reading. As for the journal I would usually do that as one of the first things I did for Thursday homework, just to get it out of the way. The journals really weren't that hard, it was just about looking through your annotations, and having good ones. Overall, my experience reading Great Expectations was good!