July 27, 2010

Meme: Teaser Tuesdays

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser is:

"Some women's love of being loved is insatiable: and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.  But you are so straight-forward, Jude, that you can't understand me!"

My teaser was taken from page 256 of my current read-- Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, Everyman's Library hardcover edition, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, pp. 519.

I am a first-time reader of Jude the Obscure, and I can tell you that it is a devastatingly powerful book!  Because of the reviews and criticism that Hardy received upon the release of "Jude" in 1895, he stopped writing fiction completely and spent the remaining thirty-three years of his life concentrating on his poetry.  The cover illustration is a tie-in to the film adaptation Jude (1996) directed by Michael Winterbottom, starring Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet.

[The rules for Teaser Tuesdays comes from MizB at Should Be Reading]

5 comments:

  1. OK, I will play along.

    This is from Silas Marner by George Eliot, on page 20 in the 2006 Bantam Classic edition.

    "Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which showed that the sap of affection was not all gone."

    ReplyDelete
  2. (I realize I didn't share two sentences, but I feel that this one sentence is substantial enough.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. OMG! I remember that sentence! It is such a powerful little book. Every line means something. Oh, I can't wait to talk about it with you when you are finished, Joy! Do let me know! Cheers! Chris

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't believe that you remember that sentence--how wonderful! I have such a visceral reaction from the imagery of those words. Just lovely.

    I am having a hard time reading it. Not because I am not enjoying it, but because I am currently experiencing reading ADD; which is not like me at all. I will try to buckle down and finish it this weekend.

    What do you think about the similarities in this novel to Nathaniel Hawthorne? I have only read several of his short stories, but there is the same feeling in this novel (at least in the first 75 pages) that I get from his work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes, Joy, I can certainly see the similarity to Hawthorne in "Silas Marner," just as I can see some similarity to Hardy. The notion of 'sin' and 'redemption,'rightly or wrongly deserved, is a powerful theme throughout fiction. I think we saw elements of this theme is our recent group-read of "Daniel Deronda" too.

    ReplyDelete