Happy Holidays!

Thank you for taking an interest in me, so it's my turn to take this oppertunity to take an interest in you. I would just like to take the oppertunity to tell all of my loyal followers Merry Christmas and wish you a happy and healthy New Year. Also, I would like it if you would keep my cousins in your prayers. Their dog was hit by a car today and they had to put him to sleep. Thanks and I look forward to writing more posts in the New Year.

Great Quote #1

How I felt when I finished Gatsby and Harry Potter:

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”

- Paul Sweeney

Great Expectations (I Loved It So Much, I Had to Write Another Post)

Great Expectations is definitely in my top 5 favorite books of all time! If you have not read it yet, put it on your list, preferably before all the others. Recently, I watched the movie for the book and I was blown away! First of all, the cast consisted of Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert De Niro, and Anne Bancroft. This amazing cast set the footsteps for not only a great film adaption of the novel, but a modern American retelling of the story. My favorite quote in the story is when Pip says, "And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?" Pip's love for Estella hurts me every time I think about it. I find myself wanting to yell at Estella because Pip is the perfect man for her, but she only uses him for attention. The way Gwyneth Paltrow portrayed Estella was an Academy Award performance and I have gained a lot of respect for because of her role. To finish, I would like to leave you with a quote from Thomas Foster's "How to Read Literature Like a Professor." Foster describes the novel by saying, "Life, death, love, hate, dashed hopes, revenge, bitterness, redemption, suffering, graveyards, fens, scary lawyers, criminals, crazy old women, cadaverous weding cakes. This book has everything except spontaneous human combustion. Now, how can you not read it?"

I See the Expectations, But They Are Not So Great

After only reading the first ten chapters of Dickens' "Great Expectations", I already feel emotionally connected to Pip. He is threatened, abused, and neglected by most of the people in his life, but he still feels like he belongs. Pip's personality sends a great message to the reader by saying that you can dream and that you can set great expectations for yourself. In the first ten chapters, Pip's mannerisms are that of a young boy. As a kid, your instinct is to respect your superiors, which is what Pip does when he steals food from his family for the homeless man. This week in my Spanish class, we are watching an Argentinian movie called "Valentin." This movie is about a young boy named Valentin, who is much like Pip, and is set on pleasing his superiors. Like Pip's aunt, Mrs. Joe, Valentin's father abuses him and does not care about him. Pip's love interest, Estella, is not the nicest girl for Pip, but the fact that she is mysterious, and most importantly not interested in him, Pip still goes after her. It's strange for me to feel such an emotional connection to a fictional character, but Pip is my exception.

Why Did I Take AP Lit?

If someone told me that I would be taking AP Lit my Senior year a couple years ago, I would have called them nuts. Every time someone asks what class I'm in and I tell them, they say that I'm too smart. I respond by saying that I did not take AP Lit to make myself seem smart, I took it to gain more knowledge about many different types of literature. I never found reading fun at any point in my life, it just seemed like a waste of time to me. "The Great Gatsby" was the first book that I liked to read, so I ran with it. During my Junior year, my English teacher opened me to a new world of fantastic books and poems that no one ever showed me before. By reading books I liked, I began to enjoy reading more and more. Now, in AP Lit, I'm not just reading books that prepare me for the AP exam, I'm reading books that I like too! I took AP Lit to be in a class full of people that want to learn English as much as i do. In the past, there was always those people who didn't care and interrupted creative discussions with irrelevant statements. I love the AP Lit atmosphere because I learn while having fun with others who have the same passion as I do.

Hamlet

First of all, let me just say that this was an awesome play. This has been the fifth Shakespeare play that I have read and it was great. This book just made me think that I wasted a lot of time with all those other Shakespeare plays when the best one was still waiting for me. My favorite part of the play was when Hamlet tells the players to do the play about how Claudius killed his father and married his mother. That part made me laugh so much because I would have done the same exact thing. It was like Claudius thought that Hamlet would never find out the truth and everything would be okay. My least favorite part was the ending. I thought that the whole fencing thing and the poison was a really bad way to end the play. What they needed was a fighting scene with real swords and somebody needed to get stabbed. I also did not like how Hamlet told Claudius to drink the poison because obviously he does not want to die, and the sad part was that Claudius obeyed. Some themes that jumped out at me were death, the supernatural, and dysfunctional family. Death surrounded the entire plot of the story. First, Hamlet sees his father's ghost and the whole story revolved around people dying and people killing other people. Second, the supernatural was very important because of the ghost and how it talks about its death. Lastly, the dysfunctional family can be applied throughout the entire play. Claudius killed Hamlet's father and married Hamlet's mother, which screams dysfunctional family to me because it is incest! Also, Denmark can be a dysfunctional family as well because of the king and queen that rule and all the corruption they have caused.

About Me

I am an 11th grade student that is preparing to take AP English Literature this year. The stories consist of prose fiction, drama, and poetry. After each book, I will post a book review about what I thought. Please leave comments and your opinions!!!!!!!!