Hardy!!

[eggowaffles]

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES NOW.



... sorry, I needed to say that to someone. Are there any other Thomas Hardy fans here?

[lindahoyland]

I had to study "Jude the Obscure" at college and found it so depressing it put me off hardy for life though I like his poetry.

[eggowaffles]

lindahoyland said:

I had to study "Jude the Obscure" at college and found it so depressing it put me off hardy for life though I like his poetry.

That's the one thing of his that I'm a little reluctant to read, since I've heard it's his most depressing work (and God knows his other books have torn me up enough). Still, the writing itself is ridiculously beautiful... puts me right off my own work, that's for sure.

[lindahoyland]

You should not e put off writing,Eggos, as people need stories to make them laugh too.I always feel good after reading one of your stories and although Hardy's prose is masterful,it is not much help to cheer one up on a dull, grey December night. I love Shakespeare,The Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen and know not in a thousand years could I write like them but I still write for pleasure.

[eggowaffles]

Wow.
I just finished "Jude the Obscure."


...
...
... Thomas Hardy and I are so not friends anymore.

[lindahoyland]

I had to read it as part of my college course.I'd not read any Hardy before and I'm afraid it put me off his work,as it is one of the most depressing stories I've ever read !

[Raksha]

I liked The Mayor of Casterbridge, but the movie and miniseries versions of, respectively, Far From The Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, gave me the willies. They were even more depressing than Madame Bovary, and that's saying a lot.


RAKSHA

[eggowaffles]

I've read Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.... and now Jude the Obscure, after which I doubt I will ever touch Hardy again. Makes Tess look like a bloody cake walk...

Have now moved on to lighter subject matter by Anne Brontë...

[lindahoyland]

I love "the Tenant of Wildfell Hall".Are you reading that or "Agnes Grey" ?

[eggowaffles]

I'm reading Agnes Grey at present, which so far seems like a very undersensationalized Jane Eyre... though I believe Anne wrote hers first. I hope to read Tenant of Wildfell Hall next.

The Brontë sisters are actually a silly in-joke within my family, as my two elder sisters and I are all literarily inclined. Relative to age, I guess this would make me Anne... fated to achieve marginal commercial success and then be promptly forgotten upon my death, I suppose ;D (Whatever. At least I won't be the first one to kick the bucket. My brother gets that honor). Was a bit amused to read the biographical prologue to Agnes Grey, though, and learn that she wrote quite extensively in her teenaged years about a fictional kingdom called "Gondal"