Far from the Madding Crowd- Thomas Hardy (1874)
I know, you want to say “maddening” rather than “madding”, but that’s not the title. Madding means frenzied. The story’s protagonist is Bathsheba Everdene (the inspiration, as I understand it, for the Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdene’s name). She starts the story as poor girl. She meets a shepherd/farmer who falls in love with her and proposes. She refuses him. Later she inherits her uncle’s farm, fires a corrupt manager, and takes over managing the farm for herself. In the meantime, the shepherd farmer has lost his farm due to an unfortunate incident, and she hires him to watch her flocks.
She is also courted by a neighboring farmer, who she refuses as well. But she does fall for a charming soldier. The soldier is untrustworthy though and after they are married, loses her money to gambling. He ends up faking his death, then leaving for a few years. In the meantime, she continues to interact with the shepherd, and is pursued relentlessly by the neighbor farmer.
At some point, the soldier is found alive, and presents himself to claim Bathsheba. The farmer, angered at the return of the husband, and the loss of his own prospects, shoots the husband, then turns himself in to the police for murder. At the end, Bathsheba realizes the shepherd has been her constant companion and they are quietly married.
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Brontë (1847)
This is my third read through Jane Eyre, a novel well worth reading multiple times. My focus this time was on each of the places she lived as eras, and what her struggle was in those epochs.
They are, in the most general sense:
Gateshead Hall- learning to stand against injustice
Lowood school- learning that standing against injustice doesn’t mean returning evil for evil
Thornfield- standing against the personal temptation to compromise
Moor House- standing against manipulations, particularly of a good cause
I also read letters from Charlotte Bronte and her sisters for context, and 5 of the essays written about the novel at the back of the Norton Critical edition. This constituted another 150 pages of reading alongside the novel
La solitudine dei numeri primi- Paolo Giordano (2008)
Prime numbers are numbers only divisible by themselves and 1. there are also ‘twin primes’, numbers that are close, such as 17 and 19, but never touching. The story is about Mattia and Alice, two young people who lived through life-altering tragedies as children. Mattia had a twin sister who was retarded. One day, they were invited to a party, and Mattia, certain that his sister would ruin the experience, left her alone in a park. When he returned, she was gone, and never found again.
Alice was given skiing lessons that she hated, and in one day, she got separated from the group and went over a cliff where she permanently damaged her leg. These two go to the same school, and end up crossing paths. They both sense that they are supposed to be together, but Mattia in particular can never seem to overcome his character and let himself free. Even as adults they reconnect and understand they should be together, but can’t get over their personality quirks. Like the twin prime numbers, they are close… but never touching.
The Early History of Rome- Livy (27-9 BC)
This massive History of Rome, or in Latin, Ab Urbe Condita, From the Founding of the City, originally comprised 142 ‘books’. We have 35 left. This Penguin Classics version contains the first 5, which cover the founding of Rome to the conquest of the Gauls in 390 BC.
Book 1 covers the monarchical period up to about the beginning of the Republic in 509 BC.
Book 2 covers the early republic from 509 – 469 BC
Book 3 is titled the Patricians at Bay, covering from 468 – 446 BC
Book 4 is titled War and Politics and covers from 445 – 404 BC
Book 5 is titled the Capture of Rome and covers from 403- 390 BC
Rome and Italy- Livy (27-9 BC)
This collection from Livy’s books comprises books 6-10 and covers from 389 BC to 292 BC, as Rome moves from one of the city states of Italy to the premier power in the peninsula.
Darkness at Noon- Arthur Koestler (1940)
The story follows Rubashov, a communist party apparatchik, who is arrested and then killed for treason against the revolution. As Rubashov is first arrested, then undergoes a series of interrogations, he wrestles with the consequences of the part he played in the revolution, and how the ideology developed from what they had initially hoped to bring about, to the current state of affairs.
This is really a fascinating dive into the psychology of what happens when the lofty goals of socialism are put into action, and how the movement necessarily turns so brutal.
Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian Jew, who joined the German communist party, but quit in 1938 after seeing the direction Stalin had taken the Soviet Union.
Under Milk Wood- Dylan Thomas (1954)
This is actually written as a radio drama / play. It was adapted to film in the 1971 version starring Richard Burton, which helped to sort through some of the nonsense… but I have to admit I didn’t really enjoy this. It covers a day in the life of a fictional Welsh town. ‘Nuff said.