Book Report

So I read 'Tess of the D'ubervilles' recently, but I didn't think it was too terribly wonderful. I only felt like reading it because we had watched two different Thomas Hardy movies that we'd got at the library. I think they were both A&E. One was 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' which was pretty good and very much giving a moral. It started out with a man auctioning off his wife and baby one night when he was drunk, (already it's intriguing, no?) and goes on from there. I thought it was a well-done movie. It was interesting enough that after watching the first half I told Kami all about it, and then Brett watched the second half and I made him tell me what happened, and then I watched it anyway. The second movie, 'Far From the Madding Crowd,' I liked even more. The biggest reason I liked it so much is because of the male protagonist was AWESOME. He was sooo stalwart and just so good. Brett again watched this before me, and told me what happened and said how much he liked the main guy --Gabriel Oak--and then I went and watched it after I knew what happened (this isn't a habit I'm generally in--first hearing all that's going to happen and then watching the movie, but it worked).

Anyway, so after I read 'Tess' I watched the movie, not the A&E version, and I didn't like it much . Interestingly enough, many of the things I didn't like about the movie were the things that it changed from the book that I didn't like. For example, I thought Hardy was too slow and excessively descriptive (one review from Goodreads said of Hardy that "every event [is] described rather than told" the same person said "I was so smitten with Thomas Hardy's writing style that I only read a few pages at a time so that I could savor the text over a period of months rather than days"--I personally just can't do that) at some times (I don't like slow books in general, although 'slow' is subjective) I didn't like how fast the movie seemed to go from one thing to another. I guess that's always how you feel when a however-many-hundred paged book gets turned into a two-hour show. And not that Hardy's writing isn't good...it is. Very good. Here is one example that I really liked:

"Places of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then."

And as far as the movie goes, I think I would have picked different scenes from the book to go into the movie, and then do them better. Anyway, I realize this is all very uninteresting except for any of you who may have read the book or seen the movie recently, so I'll stop now. I especially feel a little silly for going on so long since it's not a book I really recommend as being great. But I DO recommend watching the movie 'Far From the Madding Crowd.' For all of you locals, it's at the library. Go see it and tell me what you think.

Oh, but there was one interesting thing. Last week, there was a note in Jethro's bookbag that said that a little first-grader had got hit by a car on her way to school that day and died. When I asked Jethro if he knew about it (the note said that a counselor had talked to the kids), he told me what he knew, and then when I was still looking at him, he smiled. When I told Brett that he smiled, he thought Jethro was a little psycho, but I knew it was just because it was something big. But I didn't know how to explain it. Well, Thomas Hardy expressed it in 'Tess,' when her little sister came to tell her that her father had just died. It said, "The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as yet its sadness; and stood looking at Tess with round-eyed importance..." Anyway, I thought that described perfectly why Jethro smiled when he told me the news. So, you don't have to think he's a psycho or anything.

And, for some great fun, here is a vocabulary test for you. All words from 'Tess of the D'ubervilles' that I didn't know, so I wrote them down. I'll give them to you in a matching format, so that you can use your best test-taking skills. I'll write the answers in the comments so you can check your answers, and then you can tell me your score. There's no prize for the winner (unless you want a flower barrette or something), except the vanity of knowing you did the best (hey-that'd be enough for me!). No cheating now!!!

1. nadir
2. specious
3. abnegation
4. temerarious
5. prestidigitation
6. ebullition
7. arrogate
8. beatific
9. stultify
10. mendicant
11. purlieus

A. a beggar, especially somebody who begs in the street
B. claim something without right, or assign something to another
C. apparently true but actually false, or deceptively attractive
D. renounce something
E. diminish interest, make somebody seem stupid, render something useless, or prove somebody incapable of legal responsibility
F. outlying district, frequented place, or shabby area
G. blissful, or of heavenly happiness
H. boiling, or outburst
I. conjuring: sleight of hand used in performing magic tricks
J. the lowest possible point
K. recklessly confident