November 2019

A List: Thomas Hardy--The Return of the Native.........................................235/507

B List: Between books

C List: Scott--The Heart of Midlothian...………………………………….309/540

I've taken a bit of a hiatus from Scott, since for a while I was working on three somewhat heavy-reading novels at the same time, which is too much. I will get back to it while I am working on the next wrap-up post, which is followed by a couple of shorter B-list books, so hopefully I will finish that by next month.

Back to Hardy again--I've read a lot of him over the years. Surprisingly I had never read this one before, as it is one of the more famous ones. It's also on the B list, but probably 20+ years out from now. There are only three Hardy books on the B list. I had thought there was a fourth, The Mayor of Casterbridge perhaps, but it isn't there. There were a number of books I had been certain for 30 years were on the list but are not, The Old Man and the Sea, You Can't Go Home Again, Long Day's Journey Into Night. I was also certain that Hauptmann's Weavers was not on the list, but it actually is. The set of books is the same I've had all my life, so my mind has played some tricks on me.

In The Return of the Native I finally encounter Eustacia Vye, who is one of Hardy's most famous characters and is frequently referenced or alluded to in the writings of book people. There is something about it I like but I have not quite been able to put my finger on yet. It feels like it is the distillation of all the Hardy themes distilled to its essence. There is very little action, just characters whose inner moods are described over the course of long, prosaic scenes who sometimes have brief interactions with the other characters. It's a sharply written book though, my attention doesn't flag in it at all.

In honor of the end of the sitting outside season I thought I'd put up some pictures. I won't do this every year. The weather stayed pretty mild all the way up through Halloween week, which it usually does not, and these pictures were taken on November 1st, last Friday, when it was 60 degrees!. However it got pretty chilly right after that--today the high was 31--so I'm pretty sure I'm inside till at least April now.

Other Pictures

Eustacia Vye?

Wessex

Evoking Walter Scott