“When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.”
‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy
Amazon
Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad
‘Notes on a Scandal’ by Zoe Heller
‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A great 1st para: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD by Thomas Hardy #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-7J via @SandraDanby
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I LOVE Thomas Hardy and am going to re-read all his novels one day very soon 🙂
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An absolute classic! Agree, it’s brilliant.
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🙂 SD
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This book is still missing in my collection. Thank you for sharing the opening paragraph, Sandra.
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Hardy is an an author who suffers from the fame of one book, while his others are forgotten. SD
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This is a great reminder to add this novel to my to-read list. I’ve read Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, but never got around to reading this one.
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He’s an author I mean to re-read, especially Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge which I don’t remember as clearly. SD
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I’d read Tess again, but not Jude the Obscure. Tess was sad, but Jude the Obscure was depressing as hell.
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I once spent 6 weeks in Dorchester in a Thomas Hardy grad class. It was pretty amazing and we opened with FFTMC. I agree with the opening. Great description. 🙂
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That sounds amazing. The first homework I was set as an undergrad literature student was to read the entire works of Hardy in a week! SD
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Eegads! That’s impossible.
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I think they were trying to weed out the people who thought English was an easy option! SD
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I have to check out this author!
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Please do. His novels are so rooted in Wessex, a part of England he named himself but is really a combination of the counties of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Very wild, brutal country. SD
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Sigh – I love Gabriel Oak.
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Me too, starting with the name… SD
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