Sixfoot James James itibaren Narvey, Karnataka, Hindistan
Takes a bit to get into but really enjoyed the mystery of it. I listened to it on a trip and was glad I did.
Tom Jones is considered the first novel. I can certainly see where it would be so, because in many ways it still has the hallmarks of a text that was not written with the flow of a story in mind. It's interesting, entertaining, and in many ways quite sly, but it also manages to be rambly, lengthy, unnecessarily verbose - and coming from yours truly, with my own penchant for being verbose and high tolerance for purple prose and book length, this is not a compliment - and in dire need of a good, knowledgeable editor. I read it for class, so it cannot be said, for my sins, that I was going into it with much eagerness, but at the same time i was by no means reluctant or loathe to read it, as in my experience it is always worthwhile to give books a try. On the whole, I would not say i was disappointed. I found myself entertained by the notions of the period, the historical background, and the characteristics that Fielding seems to sketch out so ably; at the same time I found myself glossing over some of the more gregarious asides, wishing that someone would take the book and 'tighten it up' so to speak to make the story flow a little better, and to make the reader a bit less inclined to flip pages as he goes. Admittedly, the story itself takes very much second place to social satire and setting, which makes the deviations from the plot, irrelevant digressions and scene studies that much more forgivable. You don't read Tom Jones to read a fascinating or unique plot; you read it for the social comedy and the author diatribes. Thus, though it leaves much to be desired as a novel, it certainly carries its own as a book.