I was just thinking about doing a classic read of some kind, when it struck me that I was in a rather of a Thomas Hardy mood so dug around and came up with “Far from the Madding Crowd.”
At the same time, I was also reading “A Country Child” by Alison Uttley (1931), a semi-autobiographical (perhaps) title that includes lots of seasonal rurally-located vignettes of life in an English village through the eyes of this young girl (although the character has a different name than the author – so perhaps not as autobiographical as I thought? No one seems to know.
So, I had these two rural-focused turn-of-the-century small-village tales going on at the same time and it was a little confusing to keep them straight at times. (My fault.)
They were both individually good solid reads though so all wasn’t lost. I just kept on having to sort out who was whom when I tracked back and forth between the two titles. (But minor problem in the end. I still enjoyed both of the reads!
This will be a short post as it turns out that “Far from the Madding Crowd” was a reread (although it had slipped my mind that I had reviewed it earlier here), and suffice to say, I enjoyed the experience.
Onward, ever onward, my friends. 🙂
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I “did” Madding Crowd for O-Level and when I came to re-read it much later on, discovered I still had chunks of it by heart if I was started off with a few words! Does bear a re-read though – I enjoyed doing all of Hardy a few years ago.