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I'm a little over a quarter through now. I've rarely re-read books in my life thus far, even childhood ones again, and even when a child (besides perhaps those picture books as a very young child), so this is a new and interesting experience for me. The first thing that surprised me is that as I read now, I start to remember reading it as a child- a visual of myself reading, with other nearby childhood memories and feelings showing up as well.
I may have mentioned living in a big empty house somewhere before, I'm not sure, but this book did me in so well as a lad because I, like Mary, went from always having someone around to moving far away to a big empty house. I did have my immediate family still though, and the house was nothing in the least like the size of Misselthwaite Manor (I could only wish!), and I hope I can say I was nothing like the Mary at the beginning of the book, but still it was a big empty house off all by itself that I'd often roam around the inside and outside alone with nothing in particular to do. At the time I don't think I noticed those similarities, only I suppose that I felt a kinship with the book somehow.
All that aside, reading it now after reading so much literature in the interim, this seems a bit as if Emily Brontė chose the setting and Dickens chose the characters and storyline.
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