Les Miserables

It's been difficult the last couple of months to find material for my "Great Stuff I Read This Week" posts. And it isn't because I haven't been reading. Quite the contrary! Since somewhere around the end of June--which, in reading time, feels like years--I've been working, nay battling, my way through Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

Every spare reading moment I've had has been spent reading this elephantine piece of literature. It hasn't been without its pleasant moments-- with a book weighing in at 1200 pages, odds are good that Hugo would hit on something once in a while. But for the most part, it's an experience that I could have missed and still led a full life.

It's interesting. I lug this thing around everywhere I go, and usually someone has a comment. Usually it's either, "What a great book! I love that one!" or "I just couldn't get through that one." No one has ever really said, "I read it through, and I'm wondering why this has been designated a classic." So I'm claiming that response as my own.

So why I have kept on reading? Through fifty-some detailed pages on the Battle of Waterloo and, this evening, a chapter entitled "Ancient History of the Sewer?" Through lengthy passages extolling utopianism and giving the history of a Parisian order of nuns? Two words: book group. I made a vow to my sister readers, and I will keep it. I'm down to a little over a hundred pages, and by Monday night when we reunite after a summer of reading French names that none of us know how to pronounce, I will lead a discussion that will last at least fifteen minutes. My first discussion question: Would you rather read Les Miserables again, or go through 18 hours of hard labor without an epidural to deliver an 11-pound baby after being overdue for two weeks? Either would be pretty painful.

At any rate, this is the great stuff I read this week, a little reward from Victor Hugo to me after 999 pages of reading:

"Women, poor souls, are not much given to thinking."

And it's a good thing, because if I were, I would have donated my copy of this book to the library book sale back in July.