We read this book as a class for English, and one of my friends who had already read it prepared us by saying it was a boring, depressing book ("confusing" might've been in there too). I found this to be partially true. The vocabulary/writing style was definitely confusing, but reading it as a class helped (our teacher has read the book about 17 times). The first 3/4 of the book is fairly dull and has little purpose besides providing a detailed narrative of the main character's life, during which you often get mad at him, and sometimes are proud of him. I kept trying to find the genius in the book while reading this, (since it's a really famous book) and decided either something big was going to happen at the end or I was missing some incredible central theme. Then, when we were almost done with the book, everything linked together and it got interesting enough for me to look forward to the time I spent reading it. So, overall, I didn't think it was an unbelievably amazing book, but reading it was a pleasant experience and I can now say that I've read a Charles Dickens book.

Some interesting facts about the book:
- Great Expectations was written in weekly installments, so that Dickens could adapt the story (if needed) according to the readers' response. It was kind of like a TV series; when a chapter ended with a cliffhanger the readers would have to wait a week to find out what happened next.
- Dickens wrote two endings, his original ending and a happier ending that was recommended by an editor (I think it was an editor), who said the readers would be more pleased with it and he would get more sales. In the present version, Dickens' original ending follows the new one.