Thursday, March 31

Great Expectations: Thoughts on Reading

To be honest I actually didn't start liking the book until about chapter 40. I don't know why but it just didn't appeal to me. It was boring and slow going and there were a lot of big and confusing words. After a while it's really tiring looking up all the words you don't know or asking people if they know what it means. The characters were alright... my favorites were Pip, Miss Havisham and Estella. I likes Pip because he was the main character that this novel focused on and Dickens really created a good image in my head with his words. Miss Havisham is just a crazy rich old lady who is fun to read about. The main portion of her life is just dreaming what she wanted her life to be like. After her husband she recreated that pain and sadness everyday and reminded herself how much she was hurt. I also like Estella because she is a brat, she was brought up to be a brat and a turd. There is also something about her that makes me feel sorry for her. Miss Havisham brought her up that way. She didn't know her parents, she was created to destroy men and never to love them but only to lead them off and tear them up. As for the settings, sometimes it got very confusing and I would have to reread a lot of the paragraphs just to understand where the characters were and what was happening. The writing was... okay. It had a lot of big, confusing words. Some of them like larks and low were interesting. It's weird to think that people did used to say "larks" and talk about being low. As an author Dickens was okay. I didn't find his book amazing or outstanding but it also wasn't one of the worst books I have read. Pip and Miss Havisham had some similar characteristics. They both fell in love and had their hearts broken bad. But instead of dwelling for Estella, Pip keeps his life going and doesn't let that one bad bump in his road stop him like it did for Miss Havisham. The book was my only source of mystery solving, oh yea and also the discussions on class. Those helped a lot, there were things that I didn't realize, or catch, or understand until the class talked about it.

Eventually yes I did read the whole book, all 59 chapters. There was one point where I was a lot of chapters behind and I knew i needed to catch up. I did it though! My problem was that every time I opened the book I ended up falling asleep within 5 minutes of reading. I read at night, it is my favorite time of the day to read. But if I read in my head, then I got sleepy and fell asleep. But when I started reading aloud and using different voices for the different characters, (yes I did do that), it helped me so much. To understand it better, have fun reading it and it kept me awake. But if I'm not in a reading mood then I'll try my best but I wont really pay attention. By the time I got all my other homework done it was dark and I was tired so when it was time to read I was sleepy. If I'm not into a book then I wont pay much attention to it. I don't like being forced to read things I don't enjoy. I know that is a part of school and etc. but it makes it no fun for the readers if they don't enjoy it. Or let alone understand it.

Okay well my reading happened in the locker room before school, on the bus, in a car on my way to school, in my room laying on my floor or bed, the floor by our french doors, the computer chair with my feet on the computer desk and my parents rooms. I get so distracted easily so I have to be alone in a quiet place or I will never finish the reading assignment. Definitely reading out-loud helped me understand so much better than just in my head. I actually preferred to read out loud than in my head, it just sounds better to me and... it gives me more of a reason to enjoy the book. I like drama and it is one of my classes. This book was a good opportunity to practice my voice skills and showing emotions in my voice by reading aloud. I had fun doing it to, it was a one man show (: The times I was reading about 10 o'clockish. It wasn't too late but late enough that I was bored of school work and didn't want to do it anymore. When I hit about chapter 40, i knew I had better catch up so I sat all day Sunday reading. That is all I pretty much did, was read read read. That is also about the time I started getting into the book and liking it. I don't like reading in front of people or in an hearing distance. I like it to just be me and my book and voice. Overall this wasn't one of my favorite books but I did, in the end, end up enjoying it.

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