What are you reading now?

[LMcD]

In its small contained way it’s a profound work. The passing of a ingrained way of life , the supplanting of the organic ( the band ) and human by the crude and mechanical (the organ ] - pretty much an analogy for what was happening in agriculture. Farms -and by extension villages - in the 19th century were well populated and social - for all their poverty. Now the life of a small dairy or sheep farmer is largely a solitary one. Hardy perceived all this and realised what was being lost. Amazing when you look as 19th century censuses and see that small villages on Dartmoor for example often had populations four times what there are now. Of course Hardy country itself esp around Stinsford is pretty much a boom area now.

The BBC's excellent 'Wessex Tales' which can, I would say, serve as an excellent introduction to Hardy are currently available on iPlayer for another 15 days.
I would also encourage people to explore his poems.

[vinteuil]

I would also encourage people to explore his poems.

... very much so. I have never really enjoyed the novels*, despite being a Mid-Wessex lad.

But the poems, mostly written in the latter part of his life (unlike the novels), are very special


* never bothered to upgrade from the 1970s black 'papermac' editions, with the covers taken from the BBC2 series

[Pulcinella]

... very much so. I have never really enjoyed the novels, despite being a Mid-Wessex lad.

But the poems, mostly written in the latter part of his life (unlike the novels), are very special

And have inspired many musical settings, many by Finzi, of course.

https://bpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.unimelb.edu.au/dist/6/184/files/2017/02/6_Prictor-tfmjgx.pdf

[Ein Heldenleben]

... very much so. I have never really enjoyed the novels*, despite being a Mid-Wessex lad.

But the poems, mostly written in the latter part of his life (unlike the novels), are very special


* never bothered to upgrade from the 1970s black 'papermac' editions, with the covers taken from the BBC2 series

The Jude The Obscure had a bearded Robert Powell on the cover . Luckily his acting was more convincing than the bears.

[vinteuil]

more convincing than the bears.

...on a qwerty keyboard S is adjacent to D

I assume we shd read 'beard'

[Ein Heldenleben]

...on a qwerty keyboard S is adjacent to D

I assume we shd read 'beard'

There’s no bear in the picture taken in Oxford but there does appear to be a Bulldog,

[french frank]

...on a qwerty keyboard S is adjacent to D

I assume we shd read 'beard'

Thank you M y brain had been seeking a solution elsewhere (based on the assumption that the root of the communication failure lay in my ignorance of some key fact).

[smittims]

I never tire of re-reading Hardy, the poems and the novels. He had a phenomenal understanding of human feelings and the ability to communicate them throough art.

[Petrushka]

I never tire of re-reading Hardy, the poems and the novels. He had a phenomenal understanding of human feelings and the ability to communicate them throough art.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thirded..

[Ian Thumwood]

The problem for me is that I have a prejudice against "classical " literature largely because of being made to read much of it at school. I would never read The Brontes' or Hardy on account this. I would also stand well clear of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. The fact that I never read Dickens at school meant that I was not put off of read his books.

It was frustrating how teachers made selections of books to study and managed to distill a dislike of this literature. I find that my taste has become more sophisticated as I have grown older and that I have read a wealth of authors as diverse as Dickens, Mallory, Blixen, Proust, Zola , Conrad, Balzac, Orwell which would all be considered literary giants. I am equally happy to read popular writers like Rankin , Fleming or Boyd. In a nutshell, I have broad tastes yeti I have never thought about returning to Hardy. It just does not appeal after slogging through FFTMC as a teenager .

[french frank]

The problem for me is that I have a prejudice against "classical " literature largely because of being made to read much of it at school.

If you can rationalise it like that, it should be possible to start afresh to judge how you feel now. It would be a bit disconcerting if you felt the same way as you did as a schoolboy.

It was frustrating how teachers made selections of books to study and managed to distill a dislike of this literature.

I suspect it was that boys (and girls!) were too young to appreciate the qualities - notwithstanding that some teachers could make any subject boring.

[CallMePaul]

And then there are Hardy's wonderful descriptions of the countryside - so incredibly vivid many of my young students were able to understand how the written word can triumph over what flashes on a screen.

For me his finest description of the countryside is that of the Dorset heathland in The Return of the Native - a vivid description of an almost vanished habitat and way of life. Incidentally, Francis Spufford, in I May Be Some Time, links Hardy's characterisation of Clem Yeobright with the characters of Arctic exploration, which aroused much public interest around the time the book was written, even though Yeobright returned to the heath from study in Paris.

By the way, when I was researching my maternal family tree a few years back, I found a number of Hardys from Dorset as distantly related. Correspondence with one of my sources suggested that I may be distantly related to Thomas Hardy (distant cousin several times removed).

[Petrushka]

The problem for me is that I have a prejudice against "classical " literature largely because of being made to read much of it at school. I would never read The Brontes' or Hardy on account this. I would also stand well clear of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. The fact that I never read Dickens at school meant that I was not put off of read his books.

It was frustrating how teachers made selections of books to study and managed to distill a dislike of this literature. I find that my taste has become more sophisticated as I have grown older and that I have read a wealth of authors as diverse as Dickens, Mallory, Blixen, Proust, Zola , Conrad, Balzac, Orwell which would all be considered literary giants. I am equally happy to read popular writers like Rankin , Fleming or Boyd. In a nutshell, I have broad tastes yeti I have never thought about returning to Hardy. It just does not appeal after slogging through FFTMC as a teenager .

I was forced to read Pride & Prejudice for Eng Lit O Level in 1971 when I was 16. At that age, it just seemed to me to be a girly tea cup drama and I loathed it. Thirty years later I picked it up again and absolutely loved it. I had my third reading of it last month and now see it for what it truly is as one of the greatest novels in the English language and a breathtaking work of genius. Austen's psychological insight into the way people think and act is extraordinary for one so young (she was 20) and it had a profound influence on succeeding novelists including Tolstoy.

Forget what happened so many years ago and read Hardy again as if for the first time and I would not be at all surprised if you have the same conversion to FFTMC as I did to P&P.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was forced to read Pride & Prejudice for Eng Lit O Level in 1971 when I was 16. At that age, it just seemed to me to be a girly tea cup drama and I loathed it. Thirty years later I picked it up again and absolutely loved it. I had my third reading of it last month and now see it for what it truly is as one of the greatest novels in the English language and a breathtaking work of genius. Austen's psychological insight into the way people think and act is extraordinary for one so young (she was 20) and it had a profound influence on succeeding novelists including Tolstoy.

Forget what happened so many years ago and read Hardy again as if for the first time and I would not be at all surprised if you have the same conversion to FFTMC as I did to P&P.

Good advice and good idea for a thread : Books you once disliked and now love …