This is really my first full read; I'd only read bits and pieces of it before, mostly in French back when I was taking classes, and those were mostly from the plotty actiony bits with Valjean and/or Marius, with a bit of Bishop for flavor. It's been a revelation, honestly; I was entirely unprepared for the layers, the complexities, and the poetry.
I fell in love with the book irretrievably when I hit the chapter where the Bishop goes to talk to old G. I have actually been reading more and more slowly as I go along, mostly because I don't want it to be over.
I checked a history of Paris out of the library for background research, and was rendered incoherent with sentiment when the way the author described squalid conditions in urban Paris could be mapped nearly one-for-one onto structural problems in modern cities -- and this is before even touching on the utter brokenness of America's prison policies. Nothing ever changes! -- unless we fight, unless we fight. gah.
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Date: 2013-05-22 04:48 am (UTC)I fell in love with the book irretrievably when I hit the chapter where the Bishop goes to talk to old G. I have actually been reading more and more slowly as I go along, mostly because I don't want it to be over.
I checked a history of Paris out of the library for background research, and was rendered incoherent with sentiment when the way the author described squalid conditions in urban Paris could be mapped nearly one-for-one onto structural problems in modern cities -- and this is before even touching on the utter brokenness of America's prison policies. Nothing ever changes! -- unless we fight, unless we fight. gah.