"Anything by Thomas Hardy. Studied him at Uni. Miserable bugger."
Sorry, couldn't possibly agree.
Hardy's novels throb with English rural life - sunshine and scabs.
Moving and humane, yes, miserable, no.
All down to personal taste I suppose.
There's a difference between reading for enjoyment and and 'studying' - I know people who hate Dickens, Shakespeare, Salinger, Cervantes... for exactly the same reason
Ask any Irish ex-pupil over a certain age what they think of Peig Sayers - then duck - wonderful, courageous woman who wrote one of the finest autobiographies of Irish island life.
It's all down to how these authors are taught.
I love Hardy and have read all his books twice.
Traditional singer, Walter Pardon, doted on his books and read all of them at least half-a-dozen times - except 'Tess', which upset him too much.
He once told us that the two greatest crimes in English literature were "the hanging of Tess and the drowning of Maggie Tulliver.
Jim Carroll