Adam Bede

I love this book and these characters so much. The book teaches a very clear moral lesson of compassion. Eliot writes about her characters, their mistakes and their flaws with so much care. Love it.

Adam Bede. It worried me. The main character is a man, and I often have trouble feeling a connection with male main characters. It was first published in 1859, and I sometimes struggle with older titles. The dialogue is written in dialect, and that can be difficult to read. But it is the first book scheduled for Chapter-a-Day this year, and it's written by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), and both of those were great reasons to push through my worries.

So, now that I did and have, what do I think?

It was initially a little bit of a struggle to connect with the character of Adam Bede. But male character Adam is rendered by a female author, and so comes across in a form that I can emotionally connect to.

I did struggle with it in the same ways as I often do with older titles: The plot and dialogue and descriptions of settings and characters often seems overly drawn out; I want to say, Get on with it. And that happened, off and on, throughout Adam Bede. But it wasn't so annoying that I wanted to give up.

The dialogue-written-in-dialect was really tricky for me. Sometimes I had to stop and read the dialogue aloud to figure out what the people were saying. But there was also a sense of accomplishment in doing so, almost like figuring out a clue in a crossword.

Adam Bede is a marvelous book, with rich characters, both heroes and villains, heroes who blunder and act like villains, and villains who rise and act like heroes. It has a story that we can all connect to: falling for someone based on surface qualities and the results of doing that. It has a deep and thoughtful narrator who shares this story with us as if the narrator were in the room with us, relating the tale in person, with a sense of reflection about the happenings of the story that only time and age can give.

‰ЫПImagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПLong dark lashes, now‰ЫУwhat can be more exquisite? I find it impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one‰ЫЄs grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.‰Ыќ

The most engaging book I‰ЫЄve read in a while. It seems that it shouldn‰ЫЄt be that way, with lengthy passages of descriptions and contemplations that I shouldn‰ЫЄt enjoy, but yet still it is ridiculously good.