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Don Incognito

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History of Sioux City Iowa by Northern Investment Company...

Iowa Past to Present by Dorothy Schwieder

Patterns and perspectives in Iowa history by Dorothy Schwieder

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Don Incognito is Currently Reading

Don Incognito is currently reading

The Big Book of Bible Answers: A Guide to Understanding the Most Challenging Questions

by Ron Rhodes

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Aug 31, 2025 08:12AM

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Under the Greenwood Tree

by Thomas Hardy

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2017

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Don Incognito said: " This novel, one of Thomas Hardy's earliest (second, I believe), has really so little to it that it might have been a novella. But it's incredibly charming as a painting of a more civilized (not necessarily more godly) time and place whose accoutermen This novel, one of Thomas Hardy's earliest (second, I believe), has really so little to it that it might have been a novella. But it's incredibly charming as a painting of a more civilized (not necessarily more godly) time and place whose accouterments must be alien to every reader of today, probably even the English people of Wessex. I like it terribly, even as I admit the story often struggled to hold my attention. It's a feel-good novel. My reaction was mainly...envy.

The central story, a boy's courtship of a new young schoolteacher who has multiple suitors, is so simple in premise and in the nature of its two characters that even the reader who isn't jaded might laugh at it, or at them--especially the girl. It's difficult not to laugh at her emotionalism, Dick's insecurity, and the odd quickness with which she decides yes, she loves him. Until one realizes there's not the slightest tincture of satire, or parody, or amusement at the characters. Their story is earnest and so are they.

There is an incidental issue early in the book that couldn't escape my notice. One more aspect of his portrait of the rural life of Hardy's childhood, which quite disappears from view in the second half on the novel (as all attention focuses on the courtship), is the life of the village church. The new young vicar wants to replace the venerable string orchestra with an organ. The string players are pompous, self-satisfied old geezers who call their faith and practice "musical religion" (as opposed to Christianity); they sit there in the gallery with their instruments and lord it over the rest of the congregation, even complaining sanctimoniously if members of the congregation try to sing with the instruments--! (The vicar seemingly has no idea of their obnoxiousness. Why he's so set on replacing the orchestra with an organ is not very clear, unless it's just because one really must do what's fashionable.) Naturally, the men react badly to the vicar's plan; this is the subplot. And it is apparently the life of the church Hardy knew. Horrible.

I don't even remember why I became interested in reading Thomas Hardy, but I supposed I would start at or near the beginning; this was the earliest Hardy work I could find (I mistakenly thought it was the first, for a time). Even though I'm aware the rest of Hardy's oeuvre is notoriously unhappy, I had such a good experience reading Under the Greenwood Tree that I want to read more of Hardy even knowing I probably won't find this again. Except that I have the strong impression Far From the Madding Crowd (the other novel I considered starting Hardy at) is largely the same story as Under the Greenwood Tree. ...more "

Aug 28, 2025 04:17PM · see review

Don Incognito is currently reading

On Holy Ground: A Daily Devotional

by Charles F. Stanley (Goodreads Author)

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Mar 17, 2025 06:15AM

Don Incognito’s Quotes

“Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.”
― Rod Serling

161 likes

“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”
― G.K. Chesterton

143 likes

“Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

35 likes

“I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.”
― G.K. Chesterton

tags: golf

235 likes

“There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”
― G.K. Chesterton

tags: allies, loneliness, monogamy

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