Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
For goodness sake don't read Hardy's "Jude the Obscure". Has to be the most depressing book ever written  . |
"Jude the Obscure" was my first encounter with Hardy's books and is still one of my very favorites. I think it's easily his best book. Yes it can be hard to take at times but that's because of Hardy's powerful writing.
I've lost track of how many times I've re-read "Jude" but it's a lot. For decades I read it about every 4 or 5 years. It's been probably 15 years now and I recently got a copy with the intention of reading it in the not too distant future. It's been on my Kindle for a few weeks.
There are about a dozen or so books I've read and re-read all my life and "Jude" is certainly one of the important ones.
If anyone is interested some others follow in no particular order:
"Peyton Place", Grace Metalous
"The Egyptian", Mika Waltari
"The Good Earth", Pearl S Buck
"The Stars My Destination", Alfred Bester
"The City and the Stars", Arthur C Clarke
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
"The Assistant", Bernard Malamud
There are others but these are the ones that occur to me at the moment. I'm 75 now and I began reading some of these in my teens so I've read them a lot. Probably the one I've read most often is "The Egyptian".
Barry