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?"