Status Updates From Roderick Random

p.17/591. Chapter II.

Chapter 1, this edition

Roderick is in a bad way:
"I cursed the hour of my birth, the parents that gave me being, the sea that did not swallow me up, the poniard of the enemy, which could not find the way to my heart, the villainy of those who had left me in that miserable condition; and in the ecstacy of despair resolved to be still where I was, and perish."

Chapter 1.

What a strange story.

Having read The Vicar of Wakefield last year, I am acquainted slightly with 18 century literature, in that is overly dramatic (or it seems so to me), and so far Smollett has not disabused me of the notion.

Book shelved

Shelved book for now

Shelved

Shelved for now

Shelved for now

The book suddenly rediscovered its love plot

Finished ch 56/68

Finished ch 51/68

Finished ch 49/68

Finished ch 48/68

Finished ch 46/68

Finished ch 42/68

Finished ch 37/68

finished ch 25/68

Finished ch 18/68

Finished ch 13/68

finished ch 10/68

So far Smollett is reading like a proto-Dickens, but far more lurid and profane. Ergo I think I've found a new favorite! I gather he was the 'guilty pleasure' author of 18th c. England and I can see why...

Finished reading before class tonight.

I need to finish this book before class tomorrow.

Just finished everything I needed to read before class tonight.

Really enjoying this first hand account of a surgeon's mate in the British navy in the 1750s and efforts of a young man to get along in the world.

Reading for English 5342. I need to reach page 217 by class Monday night.

Rory's friend Strap tells him of a conquest he had made of a chandler's widow.