Victorians! discussion
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The Mayor of Casterbridge
Archived Group Reads 2020
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Schedule, Background, & Resources (Mayor)
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I’m looking forward to it. Just happened to watch the miniseries adaptation on Amazon Prime/AcornTV. Ciaran Hinds stars in it, and I couldn’t resist.If anyone uses iBooks there’s a free version of it available.
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I think I left about a week in between the schedules for members to digest Jude before embarking with the Mayor.
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LOL!!! ...Hmmm, perhaps a Bourbon straight-up or a double Martini?
Pitcher of margaritas please!
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Not a bad idea!
So glad this was the next book chosen. I need to read it and I wanted to do so with a group!
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Just as his life linked two centuries, so his work acts as a kind of bridge between Victorian and modern fiction. Bravely (for their time) his novels defied many of the sexual, religious, and philosophical taboos to which even so independent a mind as George Eliot's on occasion succumbed. Hardy, influenced by Darwin, and by a generally mechanical-determinist nineteenth-century view of the universe, dared to show man as the sport of Nature. His view is sometimes bleak, sometimes merely sorrowful; and it proceeds not only from theory, but from the bias of his own brooding temperament. His humor and his remarkable sensitivity to the magic of landscape and weather prevent his novels from being merely depressing. But if you find modern fiction on the whole uncheerful, that is partly because Hardy pioneered the campaign against unrealistic optimism of some of his contemporaries.
Thanks Renee and Kerstin for the words about Hardy! Haven´t read him in a while, so hope to start at the end of February.
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Mayor is a lot less bleak. The first scene is quite surprising, and the reader knows it will complicate the future.
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I’m going to look for that when we’re done! I love Ciaran Hinds. (But only learned recently that his name is pronounced “Kieran” rather than “Sharon.”)
I would like to join you in reading this book!I have read it before when someone that i met told me about the book. He told me it was a political allegory about England and America. VIewed through that lens it was fun to figure out!
In that sense, The Mayor was a “historical novel” when he wrote it. Indeed, one of its themes is that the old rural way of life unbroken for centuries was being changed by the “modern” world.https://britishheritage.com/walking-t...
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Victorians!
Books mentioned in this topic
The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classic Guide to World Literature (other topics)The Mayor of Casterbridge (other topics)
Proposed schedule for The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.
Week 1: Ch 1-8. (Feb. 23-29)
Week 2: Ch 9-16. (March 1-7)
Week 3: Ch 17-23. (March 8-14)
Week 4: Ch 24-30. (March 15-21)
Week 5: Ch 31-38. (March 22-28)
Week 6: Ch 39-44. (March 29- April 4)