What is this last book?

Misery porn. That’s the only way to describe it.

Misery porn. That’s the only way to describe it.

If you want a really short one, Cousin Henry is great to dip one’s toes in.

The Belton Estate or Miss Mackenzie are quite good too, and short.

If you want a mid sized work, The Claverings or Is He Poppenjoy? are nice.

And if you want a tome, He Knew He Was Right is a good representation of what he does exceptionally well, in my opinion (dysfunctional relationships)

He also wrote two series called

▪︎ The Barchester Chronicles , and

▪︎ The Palliser Chronicles

The former has to be read before the latter, otherwise there can be some spoilers.

I read this a few years ago. Melmotte reminded me of Trump, lol.

I felt like it wasn’t the tightest of Trollope’s works. It was perhaps written too hastily, and not edited too much. (I personally like He Knew He Was Right, The Belton Estate maybe a bit better than this one)

There were certain things which became so repetitive throughout the novel that i had to roll my eyes when Trollope would again take us through the same things , like Lady Carbury’s love for her son and slight neglect of her daughter, and also her motivations for going after Mr Broune. Trollope kept repeating himself, which was a bit tedious.

Another thing i wasn’t a fan of was the fact that Felix Carbury is just so extraordinarily one-dimensional he is a dissipated young man. That’s it. Hs is literally nothing else, he doesn’t have any thoughts or feelings that don’t fit into that particular stereotype.

Usually, Trollope is great at adding layers and nuances to personalities. Just look at Melmotte himself! Such a well written character. But Felix absolutely fails to seem anything more than a cardboard cutout.

I genuinely feel like Trollope should have taken more time with this one. It could have been even better had he done that.

Obviously, many of his characters resemble others from his many many novels, but he manages to make them quite convincing usually.

I would rate this an 8/10. Some of the themes and depictions were just really well done, some characters however needed more work.

Roger Carbury and Mrs. Winifred Hurtle were my favourite characters. I wish they had met each other and ended up together. Lol.

(Oh, and i am really glad more and more people are reading Trollope. He is a very interesting author. I have only read around 16 of his works, but i own all of them! )

Aww…i love Dickens’ writing so much. Now i wish i were reading a Dickens right now.

Didn’t his mum come and help him with his meals and laundry? That seems…rather tame.

I thought this book is going to be a light romance or just a romance

You picked up a Thomas Hardy novel for a light romance?? That’s like me picking up a sumptuous and rich chocolate cake because i wanted popcorn. Maybe you ought to put in a little bit of effort in finding out what you are reading beforehand so that you aren’t disappointed.

This particular review feels almost like it belongs in r/bookscirclejerk , it is making me face palm so hard.

No offence, but you seem to have missed almost every single point that Hardy was trying to make. It is rare for me to say that someone didn’t understand much about a book just because they didn’t like it, but in this case it is true.

Sort of…

I have read countless classics by white men, so a little bit of effort to include some other demographics is important for me.

So, in my book club for next year i have made sure we have a 50/50 distribution between women and men. And there are gay authors included too.

And in my private projects too, i have started making sure that i am including many different types of authors.

I want to be a “good reader”. For me, that means reading good quality books by different types of people. I think, unknowingly my reading has been very white heterosexual male dominated.

Obviously, i am going to continue with such authors. Some of my favourite authors are white men (Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, Balzac etc.). But, it is great to include great reads by authors like Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Premchand, Arundhati Roy, Chinua Achebe, Adania Shibli, E M Foster, etc.

I want to be experience all sorts of lives, perspectives and histories. Sure, it’s great reading about victorian London, or New York in the Jazz era and so on. But i also want to experience what it was like in Nigeria during their turbulent times through Adichie’s stories and the social challenges in India under British Raj through Premchand’s stories and the love Virginia Woolf felt for Vita Sackville-West and so on.

As time is passing, i have felt the need to widen the scope of my reading, and not limit it to certain demographics, but since there has been such a dominance of men in literary field since time immemorial, it is a challenge to move away without making a concentrated effort.

When i was not tracking my reading, it was hard to detect the pattern (mostly white straight men). I thought i didn’t care about that, since they were great books, so what was the difference. But, i don’t feel the same anymore. So many great authors (esp. women and people of colour)disappeared because nobody read their books.

The media we consume impacts our thinking massively. And that holds doubly true for books since reading is such an important exercise in generating empathy, understanding, tolerance all of which we need more of in this world.

Yes, i too read for pleasure, but my pleasure is in expanding my mind, my understanding of the world and my own self. Edification, for me, goes hand in hand with pleasure.

You seem to be doing a great job, by the way. And i don’t think you should be afraid of gaming your own system. Do it, if it will make your stats look better to you. It doesn’t matter because your goal is so good, and even “honourable”. (I wanted to read a lot of books in October, so i added a few novellas. Worked out amazingly for me, since i loved most of them!) It’s absolutely wonderful that you noticed your trend and tried to diversify your reading experience. I am trying to do that too!

I do think this, which is why i almost exclusively read what i consider to be good quality literature.

I found that when i went for genre fiction, even if it was considered really good, i walked away disappointed and like i had wasted my precious reading time.

So, I decided to focus mostly on great quality stuff. This year i have read Daphne du Maurier, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Bradbury, Jack London, Octavia Butler, Tolstoy, George Gissing, George Eliot, Dickens, Henry James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Stendhal, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Balzac, Margaret Oliphant, Edith Wharton and so on.

Not only is it satisfying to read these amazingly entertaining authors, but it is also edifying.

I know the mantras here are “read what you like”, “don’t feel guilt”, “reading only YA as an adult is fine” and so on. But, i feel that you also get to choose what sort of reading experience you want. If you find your current reads to be too frivolous, then go for classics or litetary fiction and see if they help assuage some of this guilt/discomfort.

Maybe you could alternate.

The most important thing to remember is that just because a book is considered literary/high brow/classic doesn’t mean that it isn’t also extremely fun/entertaining and chockful of action. I find that a lot of people forget that frequently.