Not to mention hysterical! Even if you're not going to France, have no interest in learning French-- then this book is ESPECIALLY for you! What do they call it... armchair travel? This book is like a first class seat!
everyone should read this book
Quite literally everyone. A review on Amazon says it much better than I could:
Here's my story about how I came to love this book.
If you're an average schmuck, with a job (not in academia), a life, and some curiosity, this review is for you.
If you're a literary blueblood, this review isnt for you. If your sworn enemy in life used to be your closest friend until they disagreed with you about whether Beowulf was a real person, be offended by my apathy and go away. If you had to turn off the TV newscasts on 9/11 because they were getting in the way of your arguments of whether sonnets devalue prose, just move on down to the next review.
I'm not a Literature buff. I tolerated English in high school and college because I had to, skipping what I could, skimming what I could get away with, and bluffing where needed. The thought picking up a stack of books and being dictated a marathon schedule to read them by still makes me bristle with quiet rebellion.
After school I ended up with a job with lots of down time between bursts of madness. I decided to make use of slow time going back and leisurely reading some of the 'classics' that I probably should have read before. Twain, Tolstoy, Dickens, Stowe and others pulled from the titles of Cliff's Notes (Hey, if Cliff says they're important....) Funny, but classics are much more palatable when they are read on a leisurely timeframe. Some I liked, some I couldn't care less about, but Les Miserables was, literally, a life-changing text.
I fell into Les Mis completely by accident. On day I forgot to pack whatever book I was working on that day and dug around looking for something other than Harlequins and Clancys. I picked up Hugo's Hunchback more by default than choice, liked the book, and in the closing commentary a writer mentioned that Hunchback was merely a prelude to his greatest work, Les Mis.
But starting Les Mis was a trial. French words scattered in the text were stumbling blocks. Hugo's text is a jealous mistress- it demands your full attention while reading. Les Mis is not in the genre of modern novels...grab the reader's attention in the first pages or lose them forever. I got bored reading about a bishop's daily routine. It takes 100 pages for the story to kick in. I stopped reading it twice, only to pick it back up a few months later and start all over.
But, as anyone who was read the novel can tell you, those first chapters are essential to the power of the story that follows.
I pushed my way through, got caught up in the current of the story once it began, and floated out the other side a better human being because of it.
Les Mis is a fantastic, detailed journey through human psychology. With 1400 pages, subplots, a cyclone of characters over decades of history, it can be difficult to distill WHAT the book is about into one word, but here's my try: Redemption.
Les Mis can be trying at times. Hugo is very detailed. He takes the reader though various side trips along the way. More than once he spends 100 pages setting up two pages of storyline. But his detail produces a work that is untouched in its ability to reveal the characters.
We see the difficulty in Valjean weighing wealth and praise from the multitudes against "one voice cursing in the darkness."
We see a character in Fantine pulled from innocence with a slow cruelty found nowhere else in lit: being turned for more misery (in surprising ways)like a pig on a split...with a reader helpless to intervene.
I see the police detective Javert as an embodiment of 'the system,'not necessarily as evil as one reviewer suggests. Hugo's penchant for overly-through descriptions adds multiple dimensions to what would otherwise be a flat character somewhere between a Napoleonic Joe Friday and Robobcop. We see Javert recite all the reasons he is right...and Hugo agrees with Javert... but we see that sometimes there is a larger truth than being 'right.'
Writing this a decade later I still see in my mind one of the most powerful images in the story: a middle-aged man and a small girl, both written off by the society around them, each with little in common with the other,walking down a deserted rural road, both clinging to each other because the other is all they have in the world.
For those who are used to watching all the loose ends coming together at the end of every hour of television, Les Mis will be a rude shift. It ends in a way that can be described as happy in its own sense though everyone doesnt ride off into the sunset or end with a joke and everyone laughing.
Frankly, I think it is impossible to appreciate the nuance of the musical without reading the unabridged text.
I finished reading Les Mis for the first time over 10 years ago. I still remember reading the last page, closing the book, and spending hours reflecting on the immensity of what I had experienced.
Girlfriend read it on my recommendation with similar effect.
Friend decided to stick it in his reading lists on my suggestion. When he started, he came to me frustrated with the slow start. "Is all this about the Bishop necessary to the story?" I said yes and he kept reading. A decade and hundreds of classic novels later still names Les Mis as his favorite book.
Shortly after reading it the first time, he recommended the book to yet another colleague looking for something to read to pass the time. As he handed it over, he issued a challenge: "Give me 100 pages, and your life will change."
He did, it did, and I now offer my friend's challenge to you!
Seriously. Read it.
a bit of ignominious quietude
good book. Hawthorne's 2 favorite words are: 1. Ignominious 2. Quietude
And the intro could have been chopped. But other than that, great read!
a year of blind dates
(click for amazon)
...left me with more frustration than waiting for a boy who never calls.
I read this book today.
(Pause for dramatic effect) That's right folks, I checked it out of the church library around 10 AM this morning and finished roughly an hour ago. I never do that! I'd consider myself a slow reader, so you might think that this book enthralled me. Wrong. First off, the premise. Megan Carson is 29, single and desperate. Her first kiss was at 27. She decides to take action, signs up for the "World's Best Dating Service" and chronicles her year-long adventure of 14 first dates through the agency (plus others she picks up along the way). A dedicated Christian, she makes it clear both to the reader and the agency that a shared religious faith is mandatory. However, the agency doesn't seem to register this as they set her up with more than a few less-than-moral fellows. But I'm confused why she's more annoyed with dates who are late than dates who blatantly lie right in front of her. I'm also confused because: -Megan says she believes humans were created to be in a relationship, but never extrapolates upon this. Hasn't she read Paul's advice, "It is better for a man not to marry..." (1 Corinthians 7.9)? Look at Jesus-- #1 Bachelor. I agree that humans are created to be in a relationship-- but with everyone, not necessarily just a husband. We are communal, interpersonal beings, and while I think there's a lot of good that comes from marriages, I certainly don't believe that a single person is "missing out". -She never entertains the idea that maybe she was not called to find a husband. She concentrates so hard on finding (and keeping) Mr. Right that maybe she missed the whole point. I admit that this (and Paul's advice) are biter pills to swallow. And from my current residency in Singleville, I can relate to her frustration. But she appears to be ignoring this reality at all costs, which only makes it harder on herself. -Something seems off if you have to pay an "incredible sum" (she never reveals just how much, but she does end up teaching summer school to support herself) just to find the man God designed you to marry. I mean, I know He's pretty creative, but if He wants me to find a husband, He'll work it out-- He's not going to leave it up to Trish at the Dating Agency. Plus think how much better use that money could have been put to! -When, exactly, did she get the book deal? She mentions it midway through her dating life... but later hints that it might have come even sooner. I've gotta admit, I'd be really turned off if she signed up for this dating service with the full intention of writing about it. Although it would make more sense... -Little things about reading this book bother me. Repeated phrases,nonchalant acceptance of white lies (one date tells his mother on the phone that he's "with Jason" while on a date with Megan), taking the Lord's name in vein (Megan's sarcastic "Oh, Lord" was not in a prayer context), eating out on Sundays... yeah, maybe I come off as legalistic. And I'll admit, it's so easy and tempting to get caught up into the dating game. But I know where I stand, and I know I don't need books like this to tell me that God should be my first love and any romantic relationship second. I've noticed both in my own life and Megan's that problems and heartache emerge when that order gets mixed up.
This book definitely doesn't belong in the Church library. At the very least, time would be better spent praying, and at worst, it might mislead an individual into believing that they are not complete unless they cart around a wedding ring.
currently reading
feel free to beat me to the punch...
what they don't teach kids these days.
Until last month, I had never heard of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge might as well have been a crayola crayon color, and I couldn't find Cambodia on a map. Then I read this book-- a biography of a girl who lived through this awful experience-- and realized how little I actually know of the world. The 70s weren't even that long ago, and yet Cambodia is NEVER mentioned in schools. Not even at the college level-- at least not in my experience-- was it discussed. I can't entirely blame schools for not teaching me about the communist takeover and subsequent subjugation of Cambodians into forced labor camps, and I can't blame schools for my embarrassingly limited geographical knowledge. I have more of a responsibility to educate myself than they do. Yet if schools are willing to dedicate months of discussion to concentration camps which existed over sixty years ago during WWII, why is it they never mention concentration camps which existed less than half of that time ago-- within recent memory?
three cups of tea
I don't have time to do a proper review right now. Maybe brief is best when it comes to reviews, though. Why waste time reading a review when you could spend that time reading the book for yourself? In this case, I think everyone-- from middle schoolers to residents in nursing homes-- should read this book. Not that it is without faults. I found the writing style overdone and superfluous. I have a suspicion this is the fault of Relin, Greg Mortenson's co-author-- Greg seems like a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy. But this book dragged on with countless metaphors, similies and over-the-top adjective choices that only served as filler. I found fault with Greg as well, but I'll get to that in a bit.
Greg was a climber who failed to summit K2. On his trek down, he got separated from his guide and found himself in the remote Pakistani village of Korphe. He asked the village chief to show him their school before he left. And this is what he found:
"[Greg Mortenson] was appalled to see eighty-two children, seventy-eight boys, and the four girls who had the pluck to join them, kneeling on the frosty ground, in the open. Haji Ali, avoiding Mortenson's eyes, said that the village had no school, and the Pakistani government didn't provide a teacher. A teacher cost the equivalent of one dollar a day, he explained, which was more than the village could afford. So they shared a teacher with the neighboring village of Munjung, and he taught in Korphe three days a week. The rest of the time the children were left alone to practice the lessons he left behind. Mortenson watched, his heart in his throat, as the students stood at rigid attention and began their "school day" with Pakistan's national anthem. [A]fter the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables. Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they'd brought for that purpose. The more fortunate, like Jahan, had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water."
Later, Mortenson makes the case for why education is so important: "We've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced non-extremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
If you have a problem, go to its source. Our problem is not Osama, as pointed out by a Pakistani government official. "Osama, baah!" Bashir roared. "Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength. In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. That only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever."
I feel like the book whacked itself over my head. Now I'm sitting here, stunned, and wondering what to do with the conviction I've been entrusted. The first thing I'm doing is trying to convince everyone to get out of the ignorance rut and educate themselves. Reading this book is a great start.
That's not to say that the book is without fault, or Mortenson is a saint. He admired Mother Theresa for her large heart that led her to embrace the poorest and neediest of all people. He also respected her stance that it didn't matter where donated money came from, as long as it was serving a good purpose. So money came from gangs and prostiutes and Mother Theresa didn't bat an eye. Yet when the US military offered Mortenson thousands of dollars to build at least ten schools, he turned them down, because he didn't want to be associated with the same government that was bombing villages and increeasing invasion efforts. The official who offered him the money said that it could have been funneled and shuffled through enough people that no one suspected its origin, but Mortenson would have none of it.
Which is too bad, because ten schools could have done a lot more good than the money was otherwise used for.