I read Great Expectations in a British Lit survey 6 or 7 years ago. Everyone hated it. They all said they hated it in high school and that they hated it then in college, that Charles Dickens was boring, they hated it. I liked it, and I've told you that. I told everyone that I liked it because I thought it was charming and I am just generally a fan of a novel that tells the day to day life of a different kind of people. Someone said to me, "Just don't ever read A Tale of Two Cities. It's terrible!"
After class a girl approached me. She was also an English major so she had been in some of my other classes, I had seen her around. I thought she was odd, the sort of girl who is fine, who tends to gravitate toward me seeking friendship, but who is so fundamentally different from me that the friendship can never really become a friendship. She seemed very Christian, if you know what I mean, and wore long denim skirts and had long mousy brown hair. She wore wire framed glasses. She seemed like the kind of girl who loves Jane Austen, which is fine, but is so fundamentally different from my own loves. She wore a homemade cape one day. One day she dressed up in a period costume because it was some author's birthday, probably Jane Austen. Another day she dressed up like the Scarlet Pimpernel and I had no idea what that was and had to look it up and I still don't really know what that is or why anyone would dress up like it to class. Anyway, I found her odd, but I liked her in the way you like a venus flytrap or a child who says "labyrinth" instead of "maze."
She approached me and said, "Don't listen to them. You should read A Tale of Two Cities, you'd love it." And she smiled very confidently and very knowingly and walked away and we never spoke again, but I did put the book on my To Read list and I thought about her when I bought it.
After class a girl approached me. She was also an English major so she had been in some of my other classes, I had seen her around. I thought she was odd, the sort of girl who is fine, who tends to gravitate toward me seeking friendship, but who is so fundamentally different from me that the friendship can never really become a friendship. She seemed very Christian, if you know what I mean, and wore long denim skirts and had long mousy brown hair. She wore wire framed glasses. She seemed like the kind of girl who loves Jane Austen, which is fine, but is so fundamentally different from my own loves. She wore a homemade cape one day. One day she dressed up in a period costume because it was some author's birthday, probably Jane Austen. Another day she dressed up like the Scarlet Pimpernel and I had no idea what that was and had to look it up and I still don't really know what that is or why anyone would dress up like it to class. Anyway, I found her odd, but I liked her in the way you like a venus flytrap or a child who says "labyrinth" instead of "maze."
She approached me and said, "Don't listen to them. You should read A Tale of Two Cities, you'd love it." And she smiled very confidently and very knowingly and walked away and we never spoke again, but I did put the book on my To Read list and I thought about her when I bought it.