Cross-posted from my Vox

Book: Show us a book you started reading but never finished.

The Vicar of Wakefield - there's not much too explain - I decided a few chapters in that the Vicar, who in every review of the book that I'd ever seen was hailed as a loveable and unworldly character, was, on the contrary, a smug self-serving old hypocrite; I think the actual moment came when he noticed one of his daughters preparing some home-made face cream, and "accidentally" knocked it into the fire, afterwards confiding to his diary that of course it was perfectly ok for him to do this and lie about it because he was stopping her from committing the sin of Vanity.



I did get through the script of She Stoops to Conquer, but it left something of the same taste in my mouth: the "shy" hero can only talk to barmaids, secure in the knowledge that they're of a lower class than he is; when a typical farcicical mix-up has him mistaking his father's friend's house for an inn, the daughter of the family figures this out, and takes the opportunity to pretend to be a maid so she can catch him as a husband.



Weirdly enough, or not, Goldsmith was supposed to have had no social skills whatsoever. His friends found this endearing.