So close

And yet, so far. I still have one Thomas Hardy to go after The Woodlanders. Sigh. Sad. I really had hoped that this one would be my last.

Have you noticed that no one ever cites Thomas Hardy when you ask them about their favorite author? There is a reason for that, and The Woodlanders epitomizes that reason.

Look, I don't need my books to be The Happy Hollisters. I get it, bad stuff happens, that's where we get plot, etc. But seriously, Hardy, seriously? Gah. It's like a bad Country Western song or that romance novel at the start of Romancing the Stone (shot my dog and burned my Bible). It's like he is punishing his characters simply for existing. I can't tell if he delights in their pain, in taking anything they ever desired and turning that against them, or if he's just super depressed, but either way, it gets very old very quickly. This one was another where pacing was important for me; I had to just plow through it as quickly as possible and get on the other side.

My other recent read was Brave New World; I don't really have anything to say about it, certainly nothing that likely hasn't already been written in millions of high-school papers. It wasn't what I was expecting, though, I will say that.