Jude the Obscure
Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude's son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude's children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably. The novel's sexual frankness shocked the public, as did Hardy's criticisms of marriage, the university system, and the church. Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry.Please Note: This book is easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation.
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- Read Jude the Obscure.
- Someone else mentioned Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbirdge". It's the one of his 5 major novels I haven't read. "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Return of the Native" are okay, but the two that really are magnificent are:
"Jude the Obscure" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/153
"Tess of the D'Urbervilles" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/110
You can sense his fury at the society he was depicting. You might not want to read either of these, particularly "Tess", if you're prone to depression.
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Frontier in American History" (1921) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22994
This collection leads off with Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). It's considered by some the most influential historical essay about America ever written. Historians went back and forth on his claims for decades, and people pointed out many issues with them. It seems like the critics predominate now. But it's still worth reading, particularly since (right or wrong) his ideas influenced the way we think of ourselves. Turner was a very good writer - he was a noted orator, and his essays have an oratorical quality - and the other essays in the collection are pretty good, too.
Owen Wister, "The Virginian" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1298
Zane Grey, "Riders of the Purple Sage" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1300
And the sequel: "The Rainbow Trail" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5067
"The Virginian" (1902) and "Riders" (1912) established many of the themes and tropes for the "standard" western, and they're still fun to read. But the genre comprises many other kinds of writing - e.g. A. B. Guthrie, Elmer Kelton, and the next writer.
Willa Cather's novels:
The "plains trilogy" (the stories are set in Nebraska and Colorado, but otherwise unrelated):
"O Pioneers!" (1913) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24
"The Song of the Lark" (1915) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44
"My Ántonia" (1918) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19810
And not quite a hundred years ago, but a wonderful novel:
"Death Comes for the Archbishop" (1927) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69730
A few brief mentions: James Joyce's "Ulysses", though I had a tough time getting through it; some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories (e.g. "The Minister's Black Veil"); "Njal's Saga" (I liked the Penguin edition with the translation by Magnusson and Pallson); the great works of classic fantasy (Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, William Morris, Arthur Machen); the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
- My favorites I read this year in order:
- Prayer of Owen Meany, it’s the basis of the movie Simon Birch if you have seen that. The book has so much more going on though
- My Antonia, wonderful characters
- Jude the Obscure, the cover tells you the ending is shocking, and the cover is right!
- How the Irish Saved Civilization, really fun and interesting
- Some of my favorites this year:
Fiction:
- Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy. The way Hardy 'smuggles' Jude's viewpoint into the narrative is so ridiculously well crafted, a pleasure to read.
- Legend Of The Galactic Heroes - a big anime from the 80s which was based on Japanese soft SF novels, which are now finally being translated. Worth a read if you're into space operas and large scale politics, I'm happy that the age of ebooks allows for such 'niche' interests to get translated.
Non-fiction:
- Secondhand Time: The Last Of The Soviets, Svetlana Alexievitch. It's her 'usual' style, a selection of interviews with a 'chorus' of shorter interviews, this time about the fall of the Soviet Union. Lots of interesting stuff from people whose world was replaced with another world overnight.
- The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815, Tim Blanning. This is actually an entry in the long row of Penguin History of Europe, but I haven't read the others. It examines certain aspects of change in Europe (starting with how transport networks moved from mud roads to proper streets and culminating in how the nation state was invented)
- Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies. As the title says, a collection of essays on small kingdoms and countries which have only existed for a short time, some for which no current country claims 'ancestry'. It's always important to remind yourself what a random patchwork current European borders are.
- Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. This is a collection of notes on young Eckermann's conversations with the aging Goethe. Goethe is famous for always challenging himself, always trying to create, make and be involved until his last day, it's absolutely inspirational. Before this book I didn't understand why he's such an icon for Germans (and I read a few biographies), but I get it now, he lived the 'man is his own marble' saying.
Computer stuff:
- Introduction to Machine Learning with Python, Mueller and Guido. This is essentially a more detailed version of the scikit-learn documentation with more elaborate exercises (even though some of it overlaps), highly readable. The scikit-learn documentation itself is among the best python package documentation out there and is something you can read 'cover to cover'.
- Write Great Code - I've only started to read this one, it's very much about the basics of what a computer does when you're running high level code, so you can adjust your coding style. So far it's very useful.
Stats:
- Discovering Statistics Using R, Field/Miles/Field. A very opinionated, highly amusing (the constant humor may annoy some), huge waltz through statistics and how to use the methods and interpret their output in R.
- Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure, absolutely brilliant. Its littered with literary goto statements, referencing every imaginable literary text. Its really pretty cool, Its hard to follow along with, and harder to catch all of the references but the norton edition fills half of each page with footnotes. I really liked this book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039397278X?tag=safet-20
- I'm not sure I understand the Burroughs example as relevant to the UK, but another good illustration is Thomas Hardy. His books sold well but were never seen as consistent with the UK cultural mainstream, and the reaction to Jude the Obscure in 1895 stopped him from writing novels entirely. Yet post-WWI he came to be seen/adopted as a mainstream cultural icon.
