About 50 pages from the end, it's all too ridiculous.

Did you get as far as young Jude killing the little girls and hanging himself? The only book I had to read that I hated more was Ethan Frome.

I did, I did. Since I was being tested on it and all that, I read a summary.

Ethan Frome, on the other hand, I liked. I like Wharton. I don't mind people whose lives are inevitably going to suck. It's just the ridiculous pile of coincidences and stuff that happen in Hardy.

I have an upper limit on life suckage.

Every time I re-read Jane Austen she gets funnier. I think she's best appreciated once one is into one's 30s.

I never read Jude, but I did see the grim movie version starring Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet. I had forgotten about it until now.

I think she's best appreciated once one is into one's 30s.

I feel that way about Melville.

I love Wharton but I *hated* Ethan Frome. Ick.

I have a soft spot for Hardy. And Tess.

::puts on tomato shield and hides behind Seska::

I love Austen, all the Brontë sisters, Hardy and Wharton. Please pass all your tomatoes to me.

I have read exactly two Austen novels. By the second, I'd worked out that they were all the same, and I was done.

Oh, heavens, no! (I mean, welcome, Seska!) There are definite similarities between the novels she wrote as a very young woman (P&P, S&S, and Northanger Abbey-- though that one's just sassy and snarky enough to almost belong with her rude and delicious juvenilia, Love & Freindship and The History of England) and very different similarities between the older, more emotionally painful ones she wrote much closer to her death (Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion), but even the similarities are all about tone and language and energy, not incidents or characters (Jane Bennet and Elinor Dashwood are a little similar, and Wickham and Willoughby more so, but their relationships with their sisters, their families, their beloveds--all so utterly different).

Most writers have similar veins they(we?) mine a lot but that doesn't mean they write the same book all the time. Except maybe Tom Robbins, but I love him, anyway, damn it. He just loves life and women's bodies so much...what? I have layers. One can't live on David Simon all the time. Austen: Phase started when I was about sixteen, am still a fan, but maybe not as passionately. Should read her now, see what's different. Hardy Bummed me out. Melville: Haven't really attempted him in long form, despite being one of DS' big faves and inspirations. I admit it, I think of that huge book full of whaling stuff and punk out.

erika, the whaling stuff was my favorite part of the book, to my surprise.