Rating: 
Summary: WAIT!
Review: I liked this book, I really did, I promise. But in my opinion, Dickens's other novel "Nicholas Nickleby" is much, much better. So before you buy this book, check out "Nicholas Nickleby" as well. Maybe you can buy both. :) Just don't go with "Great Expectations" because it is more well-known. That doesn't mean that it will be better in all people's opinions.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Expectations is the best!!
Review: I loved this book. When my teacher first told us we had to read it I thought I would be bored. Boy, was I wrong. It was a little hard to get past the dialect, but what a great story. Dickens did a wonderful job with the characters and how all their lives are somehow connected.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Classic
Review: I respect the point of view of the reader who said that he/she can't add much to the opinion of countless generations who read this classic for the past 150 years. Classics last this long because they're masterpieces, and hence this work deserves five stars.
The only thing to add in my point of view, is that I won't be surprised to learn that Dickens wrote this story especially for school boys who are really struggling to identify themselves and determine what is really important in life. No wonder this is one of the most required readings in middle school. In other words, adults won't find in it a mature story like the one in Steinbeck's East of Eden, or the taboo-sex theme of Nabokov's Lolita. This is about a young boy who goes on a long journey and ends up finding himself and realizing what really gives him happiness in life.
As for the ending, there are two endings; published and unpublished, and I like the published more. Don't read further for I will give the ending away, unless you've read it already, but in the last paragraph Pip says that the mist of the evening when he held hands with Estella reminds him with the morning mist when he left the forge. The way I see it is that Estella will go through the same journey that Pip went through when he left the forge and went to London, the journey that was initiated by Estella's father and that helped Pip to be a better man. Now Estella will go through a journey initiated and guided by Pip in order to make Estella a better woman. Magwitch hurt Pip in the beginning but Pip helped him so Magwitch gave him all his money. The money was gone but was left was more important than money: The journey and experience that made Pip a better man. Estella was mean to Pip, but Pip loved her, and destiny put them both on a crossroads at the end of the novel, but because Pip loves Estella and because she is Magwitch's daughter, Pip decided to walk with her in a journey that will make her a better woman.
Magwitch and Estella, father and daughter, never met. But there was a link between them; Pip, who became a better man because of the father, and who will now pay him back by making his daughter a better woman. Great Expectations is about the magical and ironic links between people, and how the person who you think hurt you the most may end up to be the person who helped you the most. The fact that an evil man is not as evil as he seems, and a pure man is not as pure as he seems.
And these are just few of the many other themes in this classic. So the bottom line is, this novel may be more meaningful to the middle school son than to the forty something father. Read it early before you get older!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Expectations Is Great
Review: I thought that this was a pretty good book. In the beginning I wasn't sure if I would like it becuase it was kind of different but I continued reading it and I ended up enjoying it. Some of the parts in the story were kind of hard to read. There were so many characters to remember and to keep track of. One of the characters went by two different names so that got confusing. Another thing that got difficult while reading was the dialect that Dickens used while writing the book. I like the way Dickens wrote this book. He doesn't tell you about everything that is going on, so you have many questions about things and at the end everything is answered for you. It doesn't turn out how you would expect.
Rating:
Summary: Great Expectations is a good book!
Review: I thought the book Great Expectations was a pretty good book. At parts of the book it was good but then there were those parts where I didn't like it in all books there are usually those parts. I though it was easy to understand. For the major themes I didn't always understand it all. Some parts I never really caught on to were at the beginning when he was a little kid then he had grown up I never caught on to that right away. But when I finally did it was good and interesting to find out. I do think Charles Dickens did bring the story alive. I think also he should have had so many characters because then it was hard to understand who was who and where did they come from. At some points I wish he would have had explained himself more then what he did. I got mixed up so much with all the characters it was hard to keep track of them because they were in the story and then they were gone then all of a sudden they came back. But out of it all it was a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Expectations
Review: I thought the book was boring and the worst I have
ever read. It was long and just boring. The characters were confusing and had so many names that the book went by. I think Charles Dickens was not a smart man for writing this book. He could have summed the book up a lot. He used long word that some times were had to say. The characters were pretty good to follow by with the different names. Pip was easy to follow as he aged. I thought that Mrs. Joe was a big meaniey. Joe was the nice guy and Estella was a snob in the beginning but shaped up in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Great Expectations Review
Review: I thought this book was a little hard to understand with the way they talked. Some of the words the use you don't normally hear everyday or the way they phrase some of their sentences makes it harder to know what is going on. I liked this novel though the story was great in how all the events that took place connected to something else in the end of the story.
My favorite parts in this book were when Pip was finding more and more about Estella and her family because it kept you wanting to read more and more of the story so you could find out what happened. The major themes of the story were kind of hard to understand because some of them are hidden in the story and Dickens doesn't come right out and say what's happening and sometimes he drags out the seen and makes it really easy to lose interest or just get confused.
Dickens didn't really bring the story alive for me because I didn't really understand some of the parts in the book, but I did like the story.
Rating:
Summary: Review for Great Expectations
Review: I thought this book was a really good book. I liked it because it was very exciting and interesting. I thought it was difficult to read though because of all the characters in the story. I thought that there was way to many characters and there didn't need to be that many. Dickens also used a lot of long and hard words which I didn't understand that well. That made the story even harder to read. It was also very long and I think that Dickens could have taken some parts out. It got kind of boring during the middle of the book but at the end it was all worth reading. I think Dickens is a very good writer and I would like to read some more of his novels. He thinks of neat stories that no other author would think of. Overall, this was a very good book.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING!!!!
Review: i was a assigned this book to read over the summer between 8th and 9th grade for my honors english (it seems as though many students are assigned this book going into 9th grade honors english. is it some sort of nation-wide standard?)... at parts the language can be thick and a little harder to decipher than most the language of most authors people my age are used to reading... this is only a slight hindrance, though, because about half way trhough the book (assuming this is your first dickens book, as it was for me) you get used to it and you seem to be talking like pip in real life!!!!!!! (well, a little bit for me because i read the book wuite quickly, seeing as how i loved it) i kept saying betwixt instead of between, which i enjoy saying now because it makes me feel smarter than evryone else (jk).... anyway, i was the single person in my class that absolutely LOVED this book... the only thing that i didn't like was taking EXTENSIVE nots throughout the book, which ruins many of the other books we read (such as the amazing lord of the flies).... aside from that, the book is quite good... not only is dickens able to hold my attention through most of the book (when i say most, i;m excyuding the part where they are planning that escape with provis, which i thought was boring), which is a huge feet for someone such as charles dickens, who i expected to bore the living daylights out of me... overall, the plot is very good, but the messages that it carries are even better... pip is driven by greed all throughout the book, until he becomes mentally ill... when he realizes what he's done, he becomes a new person, and is at peace with himself... the realationship between him and estella is very complex, too.. until very late in the book, he is captured by her beauty, he partakes in a blind love for her. by the end of the novel, after all he has been through with her, he gains a true love for her based on her qualities, not because she is rich and beautiful.. this love was always there, he just did not uncover the exactness of it until he grew as a person through his sever low. so many vivid characters, i can't even explain how good the characterization is int he book... IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS BOOK, READ IT NOW OR YOU WILL BE DISSAPOINTED LATER ON!!!!!! if you can, read it twice, as i plan to (probably next summer, so it isn't so fresh in my mind)... group discussion on the book really accentuate the meaning of the book... the meaning is really deep, and most people don't catch all of it. the lake is much deeper than the top of the seaweed, don't be afraid to plunge to the bottom...
though this book did not completely enlighten me and totally change my life, i did learn from it, which is something that rarely comes in spades. in this case it comes in spades, hearts, diamons AND clubs...
enough rambling for me, im sure your not even going to read that whole review, it was quite long...
review in a nutshell: good book with good messages (plural) and an engrossing plot... READ IT!!!!!
other good books: bleak house by dickens (my man), heart of darkness by joseph conrad, farhenheit 451 by ray bradbury, lord of the flies by william golding, siddartha by herman hesse (not many people have read this, WHY?!?!!?!?!??!), don quixote by cervantes, old man and the sea by earnest hemmingway... can't think of any more off the top of my head... oh yeah, dracula by bram stoker...
thank you, good bye
Rating:
Summary: 25 year old reader
Review: I was disappointed from the fact that I did not finish the whole book when I was in high school. The plot and the theme of this novel are amazing. I prefer Dickens to stick to his original ending versus the happy and romantic one.
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