When I'm reading Great Expectations, I'm always surprised by how funny and lively it is -- because when I'm not reading it, what I mostly remember is how much the narrator hates himself. It is the only book which I find more painful to remember than to read.

I had an interesting experience with Jane Eyre in that I'd manage not to read it until college, when I had to familiarize myself with it in conjunction with reading Wide Sargasso Sea.

I'm not sure that I can ever love Jane Eyre now, because of that introduction to it.

Also, JZ speaks for me.

Also Suela in re limitations of the thread.

I can't remember enough of My Antonia to comment on it. I don't remember responding to it strongly (at age 12), though.

Great Expectations. I think it has grown in richness over the years, for me. I read it at age 14, and also saw a British miniseries about it that was very faithful. (John Rhys-Davies as Joe Gargery -- gave me a perfect bead on his character.) When I was 14, I found the ending very annoying, because it did not seem to resolve a single thing about the Pip/Snot-nosed Girl interaction. (The 1940s movie version has a VERY dramatic ending, which is very emotionally satisfying, but flies in the face of the book.)

I can't think about the whole of the book and have it hang together. So, that's a criticism. Then again, so many little parts of the story jump out at me -- Jaggers washing his hands after every law-case; Jaggers's clark and his vast, unreflective love for his Aged P.; poor Joe Gargery and his battered dignity; Miss Havisham hobbling about the house in a rotting image of her life from 30 years previous.

Actually I think the weakest part of it all is the Pip/Magwitch interaction, and even then there's some frisson there (especially their first meeting); it just doesn't pan out in a way that feels strong to me.

Literature includes plays.

True, but I read some fucking obscure ones. Or obscure fucking ones. Or both.

Anyway - David Hare's The Secret Rapture. Hatehatehatehatehate. Fucking hate. (Huh. Apparently there was a British film done of the play. Still fucking hate.) The main protagonist (Isobel) is such a milksop, the protagonist's boyfriend is lucky to eke out half a dimenson, and the undercurrent of misogyny that I felt all the way through finally becomes the main current at the end. t whitefont Isobel is this sort of saintly woman whose life is going to shit: her father has just died, her sister is an "eeeeevil" Tory politician, and her stepmother (who is Isobel's age) is sliding off the edge of sanity. Her boyfriend is devoted but ends up freakishly obsessing when she breaks up with him so she can devote her attention to her family, and then he ends up killing her. t /whitefont Isobel is almost certainly a Cordelia-figure, but Hare completely failed to capture the inner fire that makes Cordelia a believable human being. And the fucking ending. Oooooh, made me mad. Ooooh. Grrr.

good to know Kat, maybe I'll just return it and not finish it. I assume that doing that with "non-smart" books is ok.

I'd like to re-read A Tale of Two Cities someday. I remember liking it better than anything we read in AP English other than Shakespeare, but I read it while I was recovering from chicken pox, which apparently fried enough of my brain cells that I can no longer remember why I liked it.

ita is me. Also, kind of missed the Faulkner and Hemingway meetings, apart from some short stories(Which it occurs to me, is one subset of fiction where I've spent a lot of time, trying to learn to write them and stuff.)

When I'm reading Great Expectations, I'm always surprised by how funny and lively it is

Yes! There are some really amusing bits.

I enjoyed Tale of Two Cities, but reading Great Expectations was like being poked repeatedly with an annoying sharp stick.