August 6, 1998

I have to read this book, Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, for an AP history course I'm taking this fall. It's 800 pages long, and of course I've complained bitterly about this fact to everyone I talk to on a weekly basis. In response, they've either laughed or comforted me by saying that they haven't even started their summer reading book for school.

Now, 325 pages into the never-ending story, I find myself wishing to go back in time to take back every negative thing I've ever said about it. Sure, some of Fielding's passages may be confusing, and the reading may be slow, especially at 2 in the morning, but there is a certain amount of "flow" from paragraph to paragraph, and he really has a gift of describing his characters' emotions. For instance, I've fallen in love with his description of how the title character falls in love.

"The citadel of Jones was now taken by surprize. All those considerations of honour and prudence, which our heroe had lately with so much military wisdom placed as guards over the avenues of his heart, ran away from their posts and the god of love marched in in triumph." -Tom Jones, p 180

Another beautiful facet of Henry Fielding's writing is that he will stop and talk to his readers at the beginning of each book that makes up this history, of which there are 18. The subjects of these story-breaks span everything from love, to a comparison between the World and the Stage, to an endless amount of observations of the critics at that time. Admittedly, these short chapters are the ones I have to reread once or twice to fully understand, but their mere existence is comforting to me, the reader.

Alright, I think if I go any farther with this, I'll run out of praise and the lazy teenager in me will start to show herself. Thereby contradicting everything I've already said, and I'll run a severe risk of sounding like a mindless twit. So, you wanna hear my ending piece of advice? If you're the type of person who absolutely craves a good controversial love story written all the way back in the 18th century, then set aside two or three weeks (or months, for readers with actual lives) and read this book. If you're not, then read something else. Please.