The eighty-first book: #195 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Quite out of order, but that's down to the (for me) unusual way in which I experienced this book. Rather than reading it myself, I started listening to the Obscure podcast by Michael Ian Black about a year and a half ago. In it, he not only reads the novel (like an audiobook), but he comments on it as he goes along. It's a good way to experience the book. Michael Ian Black is, obviously, smart and quite well read, so his insights are quite valuable and add a lot of context to the book, but he also does enough to clarify the book where it's unclear, in part because he needs it. It's a good balance and I feel it made reading the book more enjoyable - I got a lot more out of it.
The book itself is, obviously, quite sad and tragic. Jude has a rough start in life and while he has lofty ambitions that he aims for, in the end it gets taken away from him. Love and marriage are to blame for a lot of it and it's clear Thomas Hardy had some issues there, but the tragic story works well, with a clear arc to positivity that gets cut down. It's flowery in places - having it read out helps - but it didn't try to put too much into its plots. It's possible and easy to track everything, which makes the impact of it that much greater. All in all, I enjoyed the experience of listening to the book, and I'm actually going to look for some more of these. It also means I'm more comfortable jumping around the book list, so expect to see more of that!