Romeo, Juliet and I

Romeo and Juliet has many very different characters who all act differently, which is why it is my favorite book we have read so far. Romeo's friends and cousins are all very supportive of his broken heart, where as the feuding family, the Capulets, treat their daughter Juliet more protectively than the Montegues.  Out of all of the characters in this book, I feel like Romeo is the least like me because he is mopey and dramatic about everything and always thinks that every girl he meets is love at first sight. Juliet is more like me in the way that she is quiet and obedient, but the character who I can relate to the most is Mercutio. He is Romeo's best friend and there for him when his heart is broken, but somehow makes him feel better by making fun of him. This is like me because I am a good friend but like to make fun of my best friends.  Mercutio is encouraging Romeo to go live a little and meet some pretty girls at the Capulet party, which is something that I would do for my friends. Mercutio and I are also similar because we both make up stories off of the tops of our heads, mine are usually embellishments on stories or excuses not to do chores, and his are random things to get depressing memories our of his mind. Mercutio is also my favorite character so I am happy to think that I am like him.

The first couple of nights reading, I was confused and didn't pick up on any puns or significant lines in the dialogue, but lately I can annotate for these things better.  Reading in class has helped me a lot and I am really glad that we are doing it. Plus it is fun. I haven't gone on spark notes or anything so what I have understood is purely my own thinking. Reading it twice has also helped in remembering who said what which is good for the tests and quizzes. In class I don't have much input on what we are discussing not because I didn't read but because I either didn't know what was going on in the book or wanted to hear what other people thought of what was happening. Doing group work is better for me because speaking in a smaller group is easier than in front of the class. I want to read more so next week I am going to. We should definitely keep talking in class and I am excited for our first discussion!

Dickens' message to the world!

In Great Expectations, the author Charles Dickens entwines many important life lessons into his seemingly boring book. The main theme that should be learned by reading this book is that no money or social status should take the place of family and friends. Money is a touchy subject to many people and when a lot of it is gained at one time it can be spent unwisely, so remembering the people who are less fortunate is another lesson to be gained from this book. Also, with money happiness is not guaranteed a place in your life. Even if you have what ever you needed you thought would make you happy does not have kind of happiness than the irreplaceable love that your friends and family provide for you. If it is thought about in the sense that money is only paper, worth nothing, that is traded for items or services, and people in your family are living organisms who have feelings and the ability to love, it makes money seem worthless and causes you to think that money can be replaced but you cant replace a person so you should not take them for granted. From the time when money was just and idea all the way up to today, this theme that Charles Dickens wrote about has always had an effect on people and always will because as long as humans have feelings and emotions they will abide by and deeply think about this moral.

Finally Done with Great Expectations!

Great Expectations was not the best book I have read, but it is also not the worst. The story seemed like it took a lot of time to write and add all the small details, but some parts put me to sleep. I liked the settings because they were easy to annotate but the book had a lot of Gothic details like To Kill a Mockingbird, which we have already read so that is something I really disliked. In eighth grade we read A Christmas Carol also by Charles Dickens which was way better than Great Expectations. Charles Dickens isn't a bad writer but he makes things more complicated then they need to be which bugged me when I was reading fast at night. The thing I really like were the characters. They all had different and interesting personalities and made the story interesting because their personalities were sometimes used to show motifs and themes. Most of the mysteries I didn't solve but Magwitch being Pip's benefactor I am proud to say I figured out mostly on my own. I was really surprised that Biddy married Joe and very disappointed because I wanted Pip to marry her.

My reading habits are pretty embarrassing and left me extremely tired in the morning. I would usually start reading at 10:00 or 10:30 on the day I was suppose to read, after I got ready to sleep, comfortable in my bed, and ended at around 11:15 depending on the length of the assignment for that night. Towards the end of the book I got lazy and would only read half of the assignment and catch up on Thursday or over the weekend. Sense we have been reading, I have not had much homework so reading was not an issue, I just procrastinated then felt stressed to get it done. Every night. I was usually in my bed which is pretty comfortable and I was tired from a long day at school so sometimes I would doze off, especially in the middle of the book when it was really boring. The discussions and talks we had in class were really helpful in understanding the book for me and I would probably not have picked up on a lot of things if we didn't do those. The thing that I dreaded doing the most because they had to be perfect, were the discussion questions. I wasn't here for the second discussion and I still haven't written the questions for that, but for the first discussion the fifteen questions I did about six that day at school with a little help on ideas from Sherwin, and took about 4 hours that night finishing them. I was just glad we didn't have to answer them because that takes forever! I am glad that we are finished because if I was reading it independently I never would.