The Sunday Post #11: Take Me Back to the Madding Crowd

Hi guys, how’s your week been?

I read… Brave New Girl by Rachel Vincent:
Blurb: Dahlia 16 sees her face in every crowd. She’s nothing special—just one of five thousand girls created from a single genome to work for the greater good of the city.
Meeting Trigger 17 changes everything. (…. )When Dahlia can’t stop thinking about him—when she can’t resist looking for him, even though that means breaking the rules—she realizes she’s flawed, too. But if she’s flawed, then so are all her identicals. And any genome found to be flawed will be recalled.

It was pretty good. Nothing super new or exciting but interesting YA dystopian for a change. I read 2 so-called classics: I read and reviewed The Decameron by Boccaccio and then I read

Far from the Madding CrowdFar from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

description

Far from the Madding Crowd made me internally yell “take me back to the madding crowd”… So…For starters, I didn’t like the setting very much. It’s very rural and there is a lot of countryside and sheep and descriptions of nature. And I felt like there was too much of it. Like enough already with birds signing for the whole chapter.

Then the plot. Ah, there’s not much to the plot because descriptions nature takes too many pages… Basically, the plot focuses on Bathsheba and who she’ll marry because apparently, she’s the only female in 50 km radius. 2 stars because what I did like was the humor and maybe some ironic undertone. How people far from madding crowd live, how all the characters had very fascinating fun names: Katniss Everdeen Bathsheba Everdene, Boldwood, Angel Gabriel Oak, Francis Trojan Horse Troy, Fanny Hill Robin…

Enough of classics for me for now.  Finally, a little bit of nonfiction. Funnily devastating Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.What else…I joined a book club. Only once a month which is pretty good schedule for me. I updated my laptop (never update anything) and now it doesn’t recognize headphones…

What have you done? What you have you read?
//Anastasia

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

16 thoughts on “The Sunday Post #11: Take Me Back to the Madding Crowd

  1. The Decamero is tough to read, but pretty different and surprising, in terms of the vulgarities that can be found there :D I never finished reading it, becauce it’s quite long, but I was amused to find how different life then actually was to how we imagine those times. Have you tried Gargantua and Pantagruel? It’s also quite.. different.

    And yes, Hardy… is tough to stomach. He is also very dark and negative. Depressing, shall I say. One book was enough for me. Not good for my mental states.

    1. Tell me about it! :D It’s indeed quite amusing in many instances. I have read some Gargantua and Pantagruel yes…Language is somewhat challenging. Even Finnish translation of it was quite difficult. I get so lost/amused/ amazed/ confused with words, I can’t finish the sentence kind of book.

      Yeah I don’t know how to like his writing. Maybe it needs a certain time, place and mood.

    1. They are so hard to get into! You know it took me like 1,5 tears to read Crime and Punishment and for the first year or so I just couldn’t get past the scene where the main character goes to a bar (that’s like page 10…) … So maye yeah skip this one haha.

      You too Stormi! :)

  2. The Decamero is tough to read, but pretty different and surprising, in terms of the vulgarities that can be found there :D I never finished reading it, becauce it’s quite long, but I was amused to find how different life then actually was to how we imagine those times. Have you tried Gargantua and Pantagruel? It’s also quite.. different.

    And yes, Hardy… is tough to stomach. He is also very dark and negative. Depressing, shall I say. One book was enough for me. Not good for my mental states.

    1. Tell me about it! :D It’s indeed quite amusing in many instances. I have read some Gargantua and Pantagruel yes…Language is somewhat challenging. Even Finnish translation of it was quite difficult. I get so lost/amused/ amazed/ confused with words, I can’t finish the sentence kind of book.

      Yeah I don’t know how to like his writing. Maybe it needs a certain time, place and mood.

  3. I read Brave New Girl and liked it. Like you said, nothing earth shattering but a decent little dystopian. I’m curious enough that I’ll definitely grab the sequel.

    “birds singing” lol. Yeah I’d probably skip that one. :)

    Ha ha have a good week!

    1. They are so hard to get into! You know it took me like 1,5 tears to read Crime and Punishment and for the first year or so I just couldn’t get past the scene where the main character goes to a bar (that’s like page 10…) … So maye yeah skip this one haha.

      You too Stormi! :)

  4. I read Brave New Girl and liked it. Like you said, nothing earth shattering but a decent little dystopian. I’m curious enough that I’ll definitely grab the sequel.

    “birds singing” lol. Yeah I’d probably skip that one. :)

    Ha ha have a good week!

    1. Haha oh okay, maybe I need to read his other books then! I didn’t like Far From the Madding Crowd, it was just too slow and maybe too happy for me o.O

      You too! :)

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