Glad you liked it! I am still amazed that Hugo managed to make me retrospectively verklempt about The Year 1817. (not that there aren't several parts of the digressions I still think could be cut...but wow, they are placed more structurally carefully than I had realized.)

Actually the chapter I found the hardest to get through was Marius' love poetry.

On one hand I really enjoy reading thoughtful discussion of theme/structure/character in canon and I like the idea of a centralized place that would make it easy to find these kinds of essays; on the other hand, yeah, I've been somewhat dismayed about the kinds of meta that I've come across on AO3. :/