The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
231 pages

Summary: Direct from Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A739SD0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

A cruel joke at a country fair goes too far when a drunken laborer auctions off his wife and child to the highest bidder. So begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy's gripping tale of a man's rise and fall amid the natural beauty and human brutality of a rural English community. First published serially in 1886, the novel was an immediate success with critics, who praised its realism and poetic style. Rich in descriptive powers and steeped in irony, this timeless tale offers a spellbinding portrayal of ambition, rivalry, revenge, and repentance.

My Opinion:
This was an interesting novel. All the troubles started due to Micheal Henchard's obsession with himself. He is a self-absorbed  person. That personality caused him to make impulsive decisions and sell his wife, lie to a town, hate an innocent and friendly man, and other things. If he had cared about how his actions affected others, then there would not have been a story.

Besides Henchard's infuriating personality, the book was a page-turner. I was very curious about how Elizabeth-Jane would turn out due to the circumstances. I am glad that she finally caught Farfrae. She deserved someone who respects her and knows her past.

In describing this book, the plot is very widespread. I would sum it up to be about how one impulsive drunk's decision shook up a town to its core. For example, Henchard's display towards the royal personage was ridiculous. A lot of his inherent displays of vengeance were stupid in theory and impulsive. All they did was make himself look bad.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
233 pages

One sentence summary: A Vietnam War veteran recounts stories of the war, his friends/ platoon members, and the after-effects of the war in a mashup of  fiction and fact.

Official Description: Direct from: Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002TWIVNA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.  

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. 

Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. 

The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

My Opinion:

This book played with my emotions. Since it was a required reading book, I was already aware of the controversy surrounding the book: whether it is fact or fiction. O'Brien counts the book as fiction, but my teacher believed that it was fact because if the government knew about everything that went on then these men would be in a lot of trouble. I do not know what to believe just that this book played with my emotions too many times.

My favorite character was maybe Rat Kiley due to his individual story located in chapter 7. "The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bo".