I did enjoy the book. I love the characters with such names as Temperance and Soberness. I love his word choice -- he is a man I'm sure with a well-worn thesaurus at his writing desk, and a bit too intellectual at times with his diction. I love Sergeant Troy's formal exposition on the harm good looking women cause the world. I love how Hardy spends a paragraph describing the "utter imbecility" of the motion of a woman throwing an object. I love the dramatics of the phrase, "It weighs me to the earth." And I truly love how he likens knowing a person to high-water marks: "Nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them."