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Great Expectations

Great Expectations

List Price: $4.95
Your Price: $4.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Emotional and Suspenseful
Review: As a student, I had to read this book as a requirement for my junior year summer reading. Being the largest book of them all, I reluctantly started on this one. However, after giving it the twenty-five page test, I found the book terribly addictive. Had I had a more generous time budget, I would have finished the book in two to three days. As it was, it took me over a month. The storyline, with Pip intertwined in a weird emotional triangle with one Miss Havisham and Estella, has the reader wondering "Who is on Pip's side?" and "What the heck is going on with this Estella babe?" The emotions Pip felt, the things he went through, and just the thought of actually having to go through what he did brings tears to the eyes (even mine, which had been dry for years). By reading this book, I even became more in-tune to my emotions. This novel is an excellent piece of literature for any language buff (Dickens is a sheer master of the English language), and for anyone who loves a good tearjerker. Happy reading!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My first real book
Review: I read Great Expectations my freshamn year of high school and it was the first real book i had ever read. I was beyond impressed. The story line carries you and has a way of wrapping you up in the story. It has the most memorable characters from any other novel i have read. Great Expectations made me a Dickens aficionado. I saw myself faced with writing a college admissons essy on a literary character i compare myself too, and my choice was the ever popular Pip. Now, I am on my way to Yale, and one of the people I have to thank is Dickens, for his novel opened me up to literature and showed me a new way of thiking about reading.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An undisputed classic
Review: This book seems interesting as you would expect from Dickens, but I must admit that i found it boring. I only got past the first chapter, and found my self asleep. I think that the plot is a good structure that could be updated very well. If you can get past the boring language you will definitely enjoy it. If you went in with 'great expectations',then i doubt that you will come out with great pleasure. if you are put off by this review, hten check out the 1930's version starring the late Alec Guiness- it's absolutely brilliant!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Disappointed
Review: From the many rave reviews of this book, I was expecting to read a literary masterpiece.Howver,my expectations were negated, just like Pip's. This illogical story has some exciting and entertaining parts to it,as well as old fashioned humor, but as a whole it is slow and tedious. Read it if you have patience, otherwise, you are in for a long one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Throwing my vote into the ongoing debate
Review: I imagine many of the negative ratings are from high school students forced to read the classics, and this book is one of those undisputed classics. Why else would every student I've talked to have had to read this book? Me included.

I must confess I didn't like it in high school. Dickens does have a way of writing elegant sentences conjoined by semicolons. A great editor would have told him frequent use of periods is acceptable.

However, eight years later, while frustrated at my illiteracy in Japan, I was starved for great literature in English. I had gone through a couple of contemporary literature that always left me vaguely dissatisfied. I started reading my favorite author Jane Austen again, and picked up Great Expectations on a whim. What a difference those eight years made!!

No one can touch Dickens ability to evoke an atmosphere. I felt I was right there with Pip in the foggy marshes, shivering before a menacing Magwitch. Or sitting around the fire of a small but cozy house while Joe was smoking his pipe and passing along nuggets of his own brand of wisdom. Or creeped out in Mrs. Havisham's mausoleum of a mansion.

In addition, the dialogue is so authentic you feel as if you're eavesdropping on people's conversations. Joe's working class speech, Mrs. Havisham's upper class diction, the lawyer's dry speech all ring so true.

Ultimately, the story itself is so carefully constructed, even after countless rereadings, the clues in this mystery of who Pip's benefactor is are barely perceptible. And Dickens' themes of human pride, ultimate humility, willfulness of character that only later realizes the consequences, and the six degrees of separation are priceless. Dickens' championing of the working class pervades all his books, but in this one his affection for the working man is more personal. You really can't help but love Joe and his bungling dignity.

Yes, Dickens can border on the excessively dramatic. But most of the time this drama works to pull you into a touching tale.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Overrated Book
Review: Charles Dickens and this book are very overrated. Charles Dickens does not make anysense in this book. Very confusing. The talks about the same subject forever. I skipped a whole chapter and he was still talking about the same thing. I give this book a minus 200 on a scale from 1-5.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An example of Dicken's fever
Review: Put simply, Great Expectations is a wordy, convuluted, and overrated peice of trash. Written originally in different volumes and distributed to an excited Victorian republic, Dickens was able to make his audience care and feel for his odd, moving characters. He was the Stephen King of his day; a clever businessman who distributed mediocre books to the public. That Dicken's fever passed on from one generation to the next is fine, that this made Dicken's books classics in schools is a shame. But let me get to the actual book at hand! Yes, many characters in Great Expectations are original and interseting. Overall, however, Great Expectations is wordy (!), and painfully convoluted. It is often difficult to get through, and geared towards a certain audience only. This is not to say that everyone will dislike Great Expectations, but we live in an age (good or bad) of gritty realism. Authors like James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote with and still show a heavenly pen, Dicken's stories are what turns so many young people against reading. Anyone who wants to live in a former era, Great Expectations is a must; for anyone who wants a powerful, sophisticated read PLEASE put Great Expectations in the incinerator.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A puzzling story of a young child and his expectations
Review: This was well writen but left me thinking about what his expectations were. But besides that, Chareles Dickens did a good job as always.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I had to read this for my AP English class. At first, it didn't catch my attention, but to my english teacher's urging (Mrs. Brodmerkel) I read on. Actually, if she wasn't there to explain each chapter after we had read it, it wouldn't have been As good. This was a great book, and I think everyone should have to read it. There are so many different social conditions that still pertain to life today. Dickens does well in making this novel timeless.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Expectations
Review: I like the book "Great Expectations." I really like this book and many lessons can be learned from it.

Pip handles most of his situations pretty well except for at the end.From the first time he saw Estella he knew she was his love and he never gave up.I thought it was neet how the convict helped Pip after Pip had helped him.I also thought it was cool that all through the book you think Pip's benefactor is the old lady, but at the end you figure out it is the convict.

I dont really like the fact that Pip's aunt beat him.I also thougth it was pretty low of Estella to treat Pip how she did, and yet he would do anything for her.It was kind depressing at the the end because you know Pip wont get Estella.I also thought it was mean of Pip to just desert Joe after all he had done for him.When the convict gets caught at the end it is kinda sad because you just dont think he should.Anyone would like this book if they were into realistic fiction.


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