Too Big Expectations

I listened to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens on an audiotape on two car journeys. It was great having it there to listen to, because it can get boring in the car if you have nothing to do. It was read by Anton Lesser and he did a very good job with all the different voices.

The story was about a boy who brings pie and food to a convict who has escaped from a prison ship. Pip, the main character, gets a mysterious inheritence and he doesn't know who it's from.

He thinks it's from Miss Havisham, however he is not sure. While he is at Miss Havisham's he meets a mysterious girl named Estella. He falls in love her, however Miss Havisham got heartbroken because of a boy so Miss Havisham wanted to take her revenge on men by breaking Pip's heart. Poor Pip falls for her trap because Estella is very cold-hearted.

I thought it was good but it could have had a bit more storyline, the bits that it did have were very very good. It was a bit complicated but we paused it a little bit to help me understand it. The moral of the story was what comes around goes around.

My favourite bit was when Pip ran to the convict and gave him the food.

I give Great Expectations four stars out of five because I think it could have had a more exciting story.

Statue Art

Today I am writing about an art exhibition instead of a book because I found it so amazing that I thought I just had to write about it.

I went to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. Before I went I knew nothing about him, but my expectations were still high because I'd heard great things about him. I was paticularly interested to see it because all the art I do in school is drawing and painting but I want people to know that there are more ways of making art, for instance paper mache and statues and sculpture and animation. These are my favourite sorts of art because I prefer making things 3d because it's more fun.

The first thing I saw was huge giant metal balls all lined up to eachother, on eachother which was amazing because it was really exciting. That was in the courtyard before you even got into the exhibition.

Once we got inside we saw a big wax train, which was slowly moving and squeezing through doorways. I thought it was a very clever idea however it really should have gone zooming fast because then there would have been a big splat.

In another room there were rocks and things made out of concrete that my mother thought looked like poo. I disagreed. I thought they looked more like worms.

There were shapes coming out of the wall and on the ground that looked amazing because they were just sticking there, they looked like powder. They should have fallen but they just stood there.

There was one other room that we did not look in for very long but however it had a hole in the middle that was very hard to see which made it like an optical illusion.

In one room there were mirrors which made you go upside down, turning you in to a giant and turned you into little thin stripes, making you very very very tall.

Then we went into a room with a big crowd of people just standing there. In the room there was one large gun. The doorway that it was pointing at was filled with red wax. Suddenly a man came, and pushed in a cylinder of red wax and fired the gun. It was a stinging shot that hit the wall bang on and just stayed there. At first I wondered what happened, and then I saw it. It was amazing.

There was also one sculpture that looked sort of like a twisted trumpet with lips for the place where the music comes out.

My favourite piece was probably the mirrors, because I found that one the most strange, which I liked. My friend Adam went to see the exhibition on the same day as me, but I didn't see him there.

Anish Kapoor has made a very good exhibition, and I like his style.