A very good read.  Not quite as good as I had hoped.  The end bothered me, and I tossed & turned over it this morning (which is why I'm up and writing this at 6:30).  I'll put my rambling thoughts at the bottom.  It is an absolutely worthwhile read, one that unfolds beautifully, bit by bit, so reading my last paragraph would definitely spoil that enjoyment. 

Instead, some passages that I loved:

• There is something about words.  In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.  Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, adn when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.  Inside you they work their magic.
• People disappear when they die.  Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath.  Their flesh.  Eventually their bones.  All living memory of them ceases.  This is both dreadful and natural.  Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation.  For in the books they write they continue to exist.  We can rediscover them.  Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods.  Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy.  They  can comfort you.  They can perplex you.  They can alter you.  All this, even though they are dead.  Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved.  It is a kind of magic.
• When I came to myself Dr. Clifton was there.  He put an arm around me.  "I know," he said.  "I know."  He iddn't know, of course, Not really.  And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it.  For I knew what he meant.  We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.  "I know, " he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

*SPOILER*

I loved theplot & the subplots (Hester, Vida's doctor, John the Dig, etc..), but was very frustrated by the fact that the writer never clearly delineates which sister survived.  Even with disfigurement from the fire, the two girls were so fundamentally different that I'm positive Vida Winters knew who she had pulled out eventually.  My first inclination is that Emmeline died, because Vida buried her old life from that moment forward.  I imagine that only the grief of losing that dear one could cause such extremity.  On the other hand, I don't think Adeline could have functioned so normally for so many years.  Did they constantly guard her against violence?  It just doesn't jive for me that it was her.  Any thoughts?

This book was difficult to rate on GoodReads.  Ultimately I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, but I wholeheartedly agree with another reader who wrote: "Some days it was a five star read and others a two, with me wanting to throw it at a wall."  The characters were so human, so painful in their weaknesses.  It was heartbreaking to witness the obscure (yes!) demise of humans with so much initial promise.  I'm half-cursing Hardy.  But he does make his statement (shockingly for the time period) about marriage, social norms, feminism.  Sue drove me crazy throughout, but I did feel for poor Jude.  Only those willing to bounce between ache & anger will enjoy this book. 

Still...I thought it was a great read, but would be hesitant to recommend it to those who can't handle unhappy endings (or beginnings...or middles!).  Overall, I am awed at Hardy's ability to so thoroughly analyze human desires and experiences.  His pace takes some adjustment, but the writing is phenomenal.  I want to read Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native, but I may need a bit of a break from the inevitable bleak. 

This book left me worried about my emotions.  Because it really should have impacted them on some level.  But I never shed a tear.  Which is really surprising considering the fact that I bawled through half of the HBO John Adams special I watched this morning.  Why?  The characters were real.  And I guess that was the problem for me with this book.  I found it to be an exceptionally entertaining story, but the characters never made the leap to flesh and blood.  For me.  I was not attached.  A worthwhile read because it's quick & easy, but it wasn't deeply moving for me. 

I just saw a link that a movie of this is in the works to be released in 2009 -  Alec Baldwin, Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin.  I'm not so much a Cameron Diaz fan, but perhaps this will be a case where a production brings more life than the prose manages. 

I've recently been reading so much modern literature that jumping into Thomas Hardy was more of an adjustment than anticipated.  His sentence structure alone seemed so much more complicated.  And the vocabulary.  The descriptions.  It took a few chapters to accustom myself , but then I was in love.  Where I started the book by skimming through descriptive interludes, by the end I was savoring the nuances of language and tone. 

I truly enjoyed this book.  It wasn't a life-changing read by any means, but I loved it.  Especially because I kept thinking Hardy too morbid (Tess is my only previous exposure to his writing) for the ending I really wanted.  But he delivered.  Beautifully.  And kept me turning pages even through the "unsure" of the storyline.

Last year I bought a huge hardbound volume of five Hardy novels.  I'm thinking of reading straight through.

I really, really, really, really wanted to like this book.  And I did at first.  Laughter, tears, the whole shabang.  But then it got old.  The self-pity, the far-reaching drama, the self-realization, the language.  My book started falling apart as I read.  Three-quarters of the way through, an entire section dropped out.  So I threw the whole thing away.  There was no hate, mind you.  And I can even say I'm really glad I spent some time with the book as a whole.  I just didn't feel the need to finish.  And in the end, I suppose that says the most.

So this was the author selected to finish The Wheel of Time.  So Jim had to check him out.  He loved the first book of the Mistborn series, reading it non-stop when I was in Utah with the boys.  After my trip, I had a huge stack of to-read's on my bedside table, but nixed them all out of curiosity upon hearing Jim's rave review.  The book started slow for me, but Sanderson definitely wove a good and original story.  I love being taken by surprise in a novel, and there was no predictability in this one.  Still, I had questions about the characterization.  

But the second book, Well of Ascension (yes, I again skipped the bedside pile), quelled those fears.  The characters came to life.  And - once again - the plot was complex and unique.  I'm very much looking forward to the final book of the series. 

Two pages was all it took to hook me with this book.  And then I cursed myself for not reading it sooner even though it's on so many lists of worthwhile fiction.  And then I decided to relish the fact that there are still treasures left for me to discover.  Because I did consider this book a treasure.

Some quotes I loved:  

• "From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood...On the day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."
• "In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got."
• "Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."
• "And he asked for her whole life as simply as he'd ask for a date. And she promised away her whole life as simply as she'd offer a hand in greeting or farewell."
• "It's come at least...the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache... they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them."

• She like numbers and sums. She devised a game in which each number was a family member and the "answer" made a fmily grouping with a story to it. Naught was a babe in arms. He gave no trouble. Whenever he appeared you just "carried" him. The figure 1 was a pretty baby girl, just learning to walk and easy to handle; 2 was a baby boy who could walk and talk a little. He went into family life (into sums, etc.) with very little trouble. And 3 was an older boy in kindergarten, who had to be watched a little. Then there was 4, a girl of Francie's age. She was almost as easy to "mind" as 2. The mother was 5, gentle and kind. In large sums, she came along and made everything easy the way a mother should. The father, 6, was harder than the others but very just. But 7 was mean. He was a crotchety old grandfather and not at all accountable for how he came out. The grandmother, 8, was hard too, but easier to understand than 7. Hardest of all was 9. He was company and what a hard time fitting him into family life!

  When Francie added a sum, she would fix a little story to go with the result. If the answer was 924, it meant that the little boy and girl were being minded by company while the rest of the family went out. When a number such as 1024 appeared, it meant that all the little children were playing together in the yard. The number 62 meant that papa was taking the little boy for a walk; 50 meant that mama had the baby out in the buggy for an airing and 78 meant grandfather and grandmother sitting home by the fire of a winter's evening. Each single combination o nubmers was a new set-up for the family and no two stories were ever the same.

  Francie took the game with her up into algebra. X was the boy's sweetheart who came into the family life and complicated it. Y was the boyfriend who caused trouble. So arithmetic was a warm and human thing to Francie and occupied many lonely hours of her time.

And that's the short of it (and the reason these "recent reads" have been startlingly blank for the past 9 months).
 
The long of it comes from the fact that about a month ago I finished an 11-book series called The Wheel of Time.  Eleven 800 page-ish books, that is.  8000-ish pages total.  Jim has been prodding me to read them for years.  I resisted, then relented last September.  I started the first book, and one week later, Robert Jordan died.  Without finishing the final book.  I felt the irony, but my insides were untouched.

But they have softened immeasurably as I've turned each page, trying to imagine the man capable of breathing life into such a world, such a work.  And I hardly knew what to do with myself when I turned that last page.  The series is sweeping, the understanding of human nature rivals Tolstoy, the characters are powerful...and they're my friends.  So I mourned.  Not only had my books ended, but Robert Jordan died.  Last month...for me. 

I was happy to discover that Jordan wrote extensive notes regarding the final book and it is being finished by another author (a BYU graduate, strangely enough!).  Next fall, I'll be pacing myself, s-l-o-w-l-y turning pages to make this world last as long as possible before it closes on me forever.  

 Thank you, Mr. Jordan, for sharing your amazing talent.

A few women who read the book were annoyed that it doesn't give equal time to the proper care & feeding of wives...because she does seem to harp on the shortcomings of women.   Of course, being the non-nagging, forever praising, perfect cleaning, lingerie-wearing super-wife that I am, I wasn't bothered.  HA!  Seriously though, I felt more like she was obviously giving extreme examples most of the time.  And parts of the book that made me prickly skinned likely did so for good reason!  Introspection is not always a delight.  

Anyhow...10 great quotes from the book to further pique your interest: 

• Many women get tripped up when they try to measure their husbands' love by what the media or their friends tell them it should look like instead of by the husbands' own unique actions.
• That men do not emote pain, hurt and despair like women do seems to mean to some women that men are not feeling anything.  The truth is men suck it up and just try to get along in life in general and with us in particular.
• Controlling and giving are opposites, and giving is a more powerful tool than controlling to get what you want as a wife.
• The cruelest thing a wife can do to a husband is to never be happy.
• Literally hundreds of men have written to me about their pain with being marginalized after the children were born.  Some women tend to get very self-centered when they have babies.  They begin to think that their babies are the center of the universe, and their husbands are just supposed to hang out like Uranus and keep revolving around you whether or not they're getting anything back.  Doesn't work that way.  People start getting rejected, they start feeling alienated.  With men, that makes them unmotivated to be romantic back on your schedule.  
• ...the vast majority of men feel that attitude, demeanor, and behavior take a front seat to perfect skin.  When a wife behaves sexily, handles herself alluringly, and by the way she looks at her husband, touches him, and talks to him conveys her interest, love, respect and attraction, frankly, he'll go anywhere and do anything and slay all the dragons for his family.  On the other hand, if she's too busy whipping him into shape so that her world is ordered, and she forgets to be his companion, his lover, his woman, then he'll forget Valentine's Day, anniversaries, and birthdays, and all romance.  
• Complaining does not lead to anything good.  But appreciation does lead to something good.
• The very act of criticism destroys warm feelings toward the target of that criticism.
• The husband who has a wife who supports him and praises him for the positive things he does is the envy of all the other men who have to live with criticism, sarcasm, and constant reminders of their failures.
• Frankly, in order for either party in a marriage - as well as the children - to stay balanced and centered, a reasonable amount of quiet time, alone time, is necessary...It is a responsbility of both spouses to refresh themselves so that they can give their best to their relationship and their family.