Do you ever want a modern soundtrack to literary fiction? Yes? Me too. That’s the point of this feature. Whereas some people imagine cinematic montages in their head, I create a soundtrack.
Okay, so I actually do both, but I prefer to share my soundtrack.
While Far from the Madding Crowd is not my favorite Thomas Hardy novel (that’s Return of the Native), it is my second favorite. The recent movie adaptation was excellent too, although I do recommend giving the book a chance.
As an alternative for a review, synopsis, or anything of the like, I decided to create a soundtrack for the book. Please note that quite a bit of this is intended to be playful and irreverent. I’m rarely serious and this post is no exception. Because really, do I believe that Far from the Madding Crowd should lead off with Nirvana’s About a Girl? No, but I like it all the same.
“You overrate my capacity of love. I don’t possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”
“Love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me- for him or anyone else.”
03. Stevie Nicks / Fleetwood Mac
“They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
“Don’t take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can’t be yours?’
‘That’s the very thing I say to myself,’ said Gabriel.”
05. In Chains / Shaman’s Harvest
“Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.”
06. New Romantics / Taylor Swift
“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can’t show off in that way by herself, I shan’t marry — at least yet.”
07. Shovels and Dirt / Strumbellas
“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”
“I shall do one thing in this life – one thing certain – that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”
09. The Sound of Silence / James Blake
“Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied sould of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way to say a little is often to tell more than to say.”
10. (Insert Song Here). It is possible I will have a brilliant idea for an appropriate song for this quote, but so far…one big nope.
“I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.”
Your job, if you feel up to it (and no pressure, obviously, or I might die listening to the sound of crickets), is to think of something for #10. Otherwise just enjoy my small contribution to the lost art of the mixtape, with a classic literature twist.
flannel and folklore 
I love the song selections! I need to think about this a bit more, but one alternative for #10 could be I Need a Change / The Shouting Matches.
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