What You Mean

What a motivator fear can be.  What a weird place I've found myself.  When similarities push at you from two unrelated sides and themes surface, and with them uncertainties.  And you start to wonder about parts of your own character that you used to be proud of -- now I have to wonder if all that is just a barrier to logic and correct action.  Loyalty.  Optimism.  Hope.  Now they just all seem naive, and I've never really liked that word.  Or that concept.  It always seemed like the mean way to say innocent.

I'm scared to try to reach into the well, with words, and pull someone out.  I'm afraid of having to take that picture frame down, and cry.  Directly related.  I'm scared of loss.  Opportunities.  Past.  Souls.  Selves.

I just want to get lost in the night-time.  I don't want to think.  I don't want to be present.  I want loud music I can screech out to the night.  Music loud enough to fill every particle of my skin and all the concentration in my head.  I'm not sure I'd even mind the headache.  Not eventual, but inescapable?  Oh, that's not the word I want.  Huh, I'll probably dream about that tonight.

Coward.

What a horrible thing to say.  To be.  Run away.  The words behind the pictures and feelings in your head.  Just a blur of color and hormones.  Soundless.  Made meaningful by language.  Needed.  Damn it all.  Just spill every thought that comes into my grey matter onto a screen.  Not a page.  This is the digital age after all.  Although, I suppose this is technically a page still, even if it is on the web.  Dang it all, technology, why don't you get your own words instead of thieving from antiquity.

I'm getting more and more tired.  I'm forcing myself to be here.  Not for too much longer.  Why when things are looking up do they lie so far down?

Don't lie to me.  Don't do it.  I'll listen to anything that you have to say, anything.  ANYTHING.  But, please, please, don't lie to me.  I don't deserve that.  I've never done one single thing to make you lie to me.  Either of you.  Nothing could possibly hurt me more.  Is hurting me now?   Stories, not adding up.  Missing the link between the two sides of the river, forest, whatever thing that needs a path, bridge, ship between them.  I don't want to try to decide for myself who is telling me the complete story and who is leaving just enough bits out to make the remainder lies.

I want to be there for you.  But I want to say to you what you need to hear.  I want to hang out with you.  I want everything to be okay between us.

"Say anything, but say what you mean."

On the Road; Jack Kerouac

I think this book was well-written.  There are some beautiful descriptions and interesting characters.  That's not to say that I liked it.  Because I didn't.  The type of lifestyle portrayed her kind of horrifies me.  The main character's life choices, and his obsessions were kind of hard to read about.

But, another one down.

Rebecca; Daphne du Maurier

This book is brilliantly written.  It tells a real tale of all the characters in it in a masterful and surprising way.  It is incredibly easy to sympathize with the main character; even when not always agreeing with her, being able to see the situations and places in the book described through her eyes is really what makes this book good.

This is one of the times that I think I can pretty honestly say that the movie is an accurate representation of the author's "vision".  But this book is rather well-told, and I enjoyed it immensely.  I cried too.  I feel like most of the books I've read this year have made me cry.

Oh well.  Anyways, good book.  Recommended.

Les Miserables; Victor Hugo

Les Miserables is a series of tales of human misery and redemption.  The theme is life-changing love and it is powerful.

I started this novel sometime during middle school.  I'm glad now that I wasn't able to finish it at that time.  Reading it now was an incredible experience.

Les Miserables is a beautiful book.  Growing up, I loved the musical so much, and I still do love it now.  The book, however, as Hugo meant it to be, is a wonderful and thorough masterpiece.  Hugo really explains his characters and their backstories.  He doesn't just tell you what is happening in the direct plot of the story, but what went on before that - you leave every situation with a very broad understanding of the events surrounding what you've just read about.

Hugo is genius.  If anyone ever asks me which person from history I would want to have dinner with, I could answer.  He has a beautiful way of expressing emotions and is a phenomenal storyteller, as long as you can go with him down his historical interludes.

All I can say is, persevere!  It's worth it!

Some quotes I loved:

"She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been a succession of pious works, had finally cloaked her in a kind of transparent whiteness, and in growing old she had acquired the beauty of goodness."

"She was a pretty blonde with fine teeth.  For dowry, she had gold and pearls; but the gold was on her head and the pearls were in her mouth."

"Love has no middle term; either it destroys or it saves."

"Only the epic has the right to fill twelve thousand lines with one battle."

"The audacity to die well always moves men."

"Because things are unpleasant ... that is no reason for being unjust toward God."

the five people you meet in heaven; Mitch Albom

Shortest book I've read so far this year.  I took this one down in less than two hours.  I almost wish it hadn't been that easy.

It's interesting how many of the books I've read this year have some sort of perception of God or heaven as a huge part of them.  This did.  I don't think heaven is going to be like this, because I think heaven is going to be blessedly free of self-concern.  I think we just get to worship and we don't have to particularly be worried about learning lessons anymore.

However.  That being said, the lessons in this book are fantastic.  I think the plot is interesting and interestingly conveyed.  I think the story is well-written.  I liked it a lot.  I cried.  Not that that's a huge thing.  Especially when I'm crying over cat food commercials where the kitty gets a home out of the rain storm.  Yeah.

So here's where you should stop reading if you want to read the book.  And not know anything else about it.

The main character dies pretty quickly.  That's not a real spoiler because you know this from the very first page.

He goes to "heaven" and has to meet a series of five people who each have to illuminate a piece of his life for him and teach him a lesson about what that really meant.

I really think the lessons were good.
#1 "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect.  That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."
Wow.  That is a fascinating idea.  It gives the idea, "it could have been me", a whole new sense of depth.  I'm not sure how biblical or divine this perspective is - I think it gives too much credence to the idea of chance, but I think it's important to think from another person's perspective.  To cherish life and to realize that we don't know God's plan.  We might have years or minutes, no one knows the hour of their death.  And it is important to mourn with those who mourn.  We are a community and we should support each other.

#2 "You don't get it.  Sacrifice is a part of life.  It's supposed to be.  It's not something to regret.  It's something to aspire to.  Little sacrifices.  Big sacrifices.  A mother works so her son can go to school.  A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father... That's the thing.  Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it.  You're just passing it on to someone else."

Beautifully said, Mitch.  This lesson is particularly dear to my heart because, for one, it is one of the cardinal traits of my husband's personality.  He believes in duty and sacrifice and doing what is right because it is right and no other reason.  People are shocked when they hear I agreed to move so far away from home when I married, but it seems like such a small sacrifice when compared with the joy I get from living and loving and supporting my husband.
We sacrifice around us all of the time.  It is so easy to think of sacrifice personified in the presence of an American soldier, and somehow to downplay it because it's talked about so much.  But sacrifice is important in all of us, true heroes and people who think they are just living the day to day.  And this book does a good job of putting that concept on display.

#3 "Holding anger is a poison.  It eats you from inside.  We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us.  But hatred is a curved blade.  And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."

I can hold a grudge with the best of them.  I really can.  It was actually one of the things my dad really thought Patrick should know before he married me.  I'll hold them longer if the word or deed was done against someone I loved than against myself, but that's not the point.  This quote is fantastic though.  So many of us won't let go of hurts, and they change the entire course of our lives.

#4 "Life has to end.  Love doesn't."

I don't really know what to say about this one.  It has to do with loving someone even after they've gone, but I've never really lost someone I loved.  Not really.  It makes me cry even to think about it, really.  But I believe love should be stronger than death, even if it changes form.

#5 I can't quote this one.  It's complicated.  But the thrust of it is that our lives have purpose.  Who we are and what we do is purposeful.

It's a beautiful thought that even through experiences that we think or horrible, or that bring us to a place where we don't necessarily want to be, a purpose is being worked out.  I think that's important too.

I was leery about this book, but I really did end up liking it a lot.  It is more than worth the short amount of time it takes to read.

Emma; Jane Austen

This has been on my shelf for so long.  SO LONG.  And I didn't read it, because as much as I enjoyed the Gwyneth Paltrow rendition (?) of the story, it also sort of bores me and I was afraid.  Afraid of trying to get into it and being bored by trifles.

Please don't think too poorly of me for that fear.

The back of the book explains it quite well, and helps me understand why I did end up enjoying it so much.

"Jane Austen's intimate study of a complex young lady of twenty, whose egotism, snobbishness, malice, and zeal for arranging the affairs of others leads her into errors of judgement which she must eventually face."  (There's another sentence to that part, but again, it gives away the ending and it still horrifies me that the back-of-book summarizers don't have some sort of taboo against it.  And by "gives away" I mean tells you the ending.)

There's only one word in that summary that I disagree with, and am puzzled by.  "Malice."  I thought I had a pretty good understanding of that word so I looked to Webster to make sure: "desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another".  Yes.  That's what I thought.  I do not find it permissible for that word to be included in a description of Emma Woodhouse's character.  I wonder why it was allowed and I wish to strike it from the record.

This book is a wonderful character study.  As far as I'm concerned it is on par with a work of Dickens - but like a mini Dickens, because I haven't read one of his this short yet.

This is what the rest of the back of the book has to say:

"Although Jane Austen is reported to have described Emma as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like", many readers have thought the novel her greatest.  Mark Schorer, in his introduction, also places it at the head of her achievements."

Okay.  I'm not sure I'd go that far.  I have to read the rest of her works, I suppose.  But ... I mean, it is a Jane Austen.  You have to expect certain things, and most certainly not expect others.  Like... don't expect a plethora of action sequences, but do expect witty conversation, and inevitable embarrassments for the main character.  You get that.  But I liked this book.  I think it is a great "setting-down" of a person's thoughts, situations and growth-- and has a lot of interesting insight.

"The first error, and the worst, lay at her door.  It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together.  It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious -- a trick of what ought to be simple.  She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more."

The Da Vinci Code; Dan Brown

Okay.

I read it.  Finally.

I didn't understand its popularity and the hysteria that seethed around it in a mass of annoyed Catholics and other Christian groups.

So I listened to two sermons by Father Robert Barron and I guess I get their point.  The claim in the book that Christ wasn't or isn't divine would be cause for annoyance and uproar--

If the whole thing hadn't seemed quite so ridiculous.  And Father Barron did a good job in his first sermon on the topic of saying why the claim that Christ's divinity was an invention of the 4th Century was so ridiculous.

I guess I'll speak apart from all of the anti-Catholic sentiment that the book, I don't know, espouses?  I will simply treat this as a work of fiction.  Which it is.  Does Brown even make the claim that everything in it is true?  I hope not.

In any case.  Why was this book even popular?  I'm guessing because it tread in such highly charged waters.  It took on a subject in a fictional and adventurous sense that other books and authors hadn't.  That is the only reason I can see for its popularity.

It was a mystery/adventure story.  Is.  Whatever.  As far as I'm concerned... it wasn't that great.  It was interesting enough, I suppose, and there were some very "clever" puzzles, but it nothing new, and nothing that absorbing.  Brown makes good use of suspense and holding on to it as long as possible to keep interest going.  He has interesting timing.

But I saw nothing in the book that particularly makes me think it deserves to be in the company of some of the other books on this list.  His characters were unimaginative and saw very little growth throughout the course of the story.  The plot was... foreseeable.

The only particularly good thing about this book being on the list was that because it was so easy to read, it didn't cause me to pause in reveries of thought and self-searching, even as Moby Dick did in many places.

I wouldn't place it very high on any reading list.  There are SO many other, worthier titles -- even as far as children's books, that I would recommend.

Feel free to argue with me.  I would love to see more merit in this book.  My parents were here so it took me like three days to read it; which is just embarrassing.

Moby Dick; Herman Melville

"I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise."

I will lie neither to myself nor you. This book is painful to read. Moby Dick. It is almost set up on a pedestal, like some sort of king of American literature, unconquerable, proud, and menacing. It is a classic of epic and intimidating proportions. A monolith as big as its title character.

It is an amazing book. It is filled with unlooked-for beauty in its prose. At one moment struggling though a less than captivating description of the finer points of cetology, in the next being struck in the face by the masterful way in which your narrator, Ishmael, describes some aspect of life, or human nature or the sea.

This book is worthy of the label "classic". It should be read. My only advice is to go into the reading of it with an open mind and dedication. It was not easy for me to read. I'm pretty sure I've never taken this long to read a book in my entire life; and I have definitely read longer ones. But it is challenging and beautiful and worth while. I'm really glad to have finally read it and I think that I will again in the future.

The Time Traveler's Wife; Audrey Niffenegger

I haven't found a book on this BBC list yet that I wouldn't consider good, in at least one way. I don't have problems with them in regards to an interesting story, plot holes, characterizations, etc. This one isn't some sort of exception. It is well-written, definitely. Niffenegger's conception of time-travel is interesting and novel. Her two main characters are a study in people dealing/accepting weird situations. The whole world constructed within her novel is excellent because it is on the very cusp of ours; and she makes her reader believe this could be possible, and that in the not-very-distant future, we will find out that hers is indeed the world we are inhabiting.

I liked it. Very much, as evidenced by the fact that I read it within the confines of a 24-hour period. That's not that impressive for me. It was 537 pages, give or take, with big print. It doesn't look that daunting from the outside, and its a quick read so, if you've been thinking about giving it a go, I've heard the movie is crap compared and I'm telling you now that it's worthwhile.

Here is the part where you should stop reading if you are intending, at any time in the future, to read this book and you care about spoilers. I shall even insert a picture to make sure that if you don't want to see what comes next, it's only your fault if you do. (The picture, by the way, is from our tour group waiting in the airport in Germany to get to Thessaloniki. I've been scrapbooking!) You can come back and read the end of this post after you've read the book, if you're that interested.

And here it is. I don't ask a lot from books. I'm not what most people would call picky when it comes to the kind of "literature" I read. Give me an interesting plot. Give me memorable and hopefully, at least at times, virtuous characters. Give me some sort of a take-home message, even if it's something as benign as, "Life is short; live it while you can." Not that that message is really benign, per say, but you do tend to hear it a lot. At least I do, and that's kind of sad because I'm still working a desk job and not, for instance, writing a novel or saving the world.

And this novel does have good characters. The plot is fascinating and heartrending. The message is BEAUTIFUL; and has to do a lot with not taking for granted what you have, and living in the moment and loving. LOVING!

But what I ask in my reading material, most of all, more than anything, is for a happy ending. I don't even care if it's trite (which is a "fault" many have found in the Harry Potter series epilogue; I loved it. All I'd really like to know is what all of them do for a living now. Especially Harry, but I can live with not knowing, because I know that they are happy, and relatively safe.)

Which is the point. Not only did the ending of that book make me cry, they were not happy tears. They were not tears of rejoicing with the characters I had come to love over the last 500 pages. They were sadness and grief and horror pouring out of me.

Some people can find beauty there, but I just get upset and have to sort of mope through my other activities for a while. So that was the fault I found with the book. I didn't like the end. So that's not too bad in the grand scale of things. Maybe you'd be able to deal with it, at least better than I do/did.

I guess I figure that life has very few happy endings and authors have no excuse because their worlds are their own construction and are not bound by the rules of ours.

Anyways, on to some Shakespeare now.

War and Peace; Leo Tolstoy

It seems so ... familiar to call him Leo, but as that is what is on the cover of the book, I sort of feel like I need to go with it. I would prefer to call him Leopold or Leonardo, but as far as I know, he's just called Leo.

Wow, War and Peace. First of all more than anything, if you are going to read this book, at any time in your life, for the love of all that is good, do not read the back of the book. At least not if you have the Barnes and Nobles Classics addition. I don't know what the deal is, but I guess that because this is a really famous book, whoever writes those thinks oh, everybody knows what's going to happen. Look-- I may be reading this book for the wrong reasons, because I am interested in the plot, but you putting on there what is going to happen, really angers me.

I'm not sure how lucid I just was, but I was really angry about learning what I did off the back of that book.

That being said, I was angry because this book was fantastic. It was entrancing. I loved loved loved so many of his characters. The way Tolstoy takes historical events from Europe and Russia and works in his ideas and these characters is superb.

There are slow parts, at least for me. Sometimes I had a hard time paying attention, especially when he's detailing parts of campaigns, and the last part of the epilogue was incredibly philosophical (yet interesting).

The problem with this book is the size. Everyone looks at this tome and thinks, "there's no way I'm going to be able to finish that." It's just daunting. But it is worthwhile.

Also, it is really interesting to follow Tolstoy's patriotism.

But I loved this book, even if it did take me a MONTH to read it, and I think I will read it again and I have no doubt that I'm going to get even more out of it next time.

Some Quotes I Liked:
"No, to kill a man is bad, wrong..."
"Why is it wrong?" repeated Prince Andrey; "what's right and wrong is a question it has not been given to men to decide. Men are for ever in error, and always will be in error, and in nothing more than in what they regard as right and wrong."

"But you know what they say," he said, "that war is like a game of chess."
"Yes," said Prince Andrey, "only with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please, that you are not limited as to time, and with this further difference that a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. No one can ever be certain of the relative strength of made by the staff, I would be there, and helping to make them, but instead of that I have the honour of serving here in the regiment with these gentelmen here, and I consider that the day really depends upon us to-morrow and not on them... Success never has depended and will never depend on position, on arms, nor even on numbers; and, least of all, on position."
"On what then?"
"On the feeling that is in me and him," he indicated Timohin, "and every soldier."

"Strange are the historical accounts that tell us how some king or emperor, quarrelling with another king or emperor, levies an army, fights a battle with the army of his foe, gains a victory, kills three, five, or ten thousand men, and consequently subdues a state and a whole people consisting of several millions; and incomprehensible it seems that the defeat of any army, one hundredth of the whole strength of a people, should force that people to submit."

My 2012 Reading Challenge

Back in 2009, I first read the BBC books challenge. I'm not sure if the one I found was unadulterated, but in any case, it came with this little note that said the BBC said they thought most people had only read 6 out of this list of almost 100 books. I was offended. I'd read 30 of them. I'm using this year to not only finish out their list, just because I'm mad at their pretension, but also add on a couple of books that I've been meaning to read and haven't. The three that I've already blogged about were on that list and here are the remaining challenges for my year:

Great Expectations; Charles Dickens

Catch 22; Joseph Heller

Finish the Complete Works of Shakespeare

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

Birdsong; Sebastian Faulk

The Time Traveler's Wife; Audrey Niffeneger

Middlemarch; George Eliot

Gone with the Wind; Margaret Mitchell

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bleak House; Charlie D.

War and Peace; Leo Tolstoy

Brideshead Revisited; Evelyn Waugh

Crime and Punishment; Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anna Karenina; Leo Tolstoy

David Copperfield; Charlie D.

Emma; Jane Austen

Persuasion, Jane Austen

The King's General; Daphne du Maurier

The Kite Runner; Khaled Hosseini

Captain Correlli's Mandolin; Louis de Bernieres

Memoirs of a Geisha; Arthur Golden

Winnie the Pooh; AA Milne

The Da Vinci Code; Dan Brown

A Prayer for Owen Meany; John Irving

The Woman in White; Wilkie Collins

Far from the Madding Crowd; Thomas Hardy

The Handmaid's Tale; Margaret Atwood

Atonement; Ian McEwan

Life of Pi; Yann Martel

Dune; Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm; Stella Gibbons

A Suitable Boy; Vikram Seth

The Shadow of the Wind; Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime; Mark Haddon

Lolita; Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History; Donna Tartt

The Count of Monte Cristo (UNABRIDGED); Alexandre Dumas (if I can even find it)

On the Road; Jack Kerouac

Jude the Obscure; Thomas Hardy

Bridget Jones's Diary; Helen Fielding

Midnight's Children; Salman Rushdie

Moby Dick; Herman Melville

Oliver Twist; Charles Dickens

The Secret Garden; Frances Hodgson Burnett

Notes from a Small Island; Bill Bryson

Ulysses; James Joyce

Swallows and Amazons; Arthur Ransome

Vanity Fair; William Makepeace Thackeray

Possession; AS Byatt

A Christmas Carol; Charles Dickens

Cloud Atlas; David Mitchell

The Remains of the Day; Kazuo Ishiguro

A Fine Balance; Rohinton Mistry

The Five People You Meet in Heaven; Mitch Albomy

The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (only have a few to finish)

The Faraway Tree Collection; Enid Blyton

Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad

The Wasp Factory; Iain Banks

Watership Down; Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces; John Kennedy Toole

A Town Like Alice; Nevil Shute

Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

Reflections on the Revolution in France; Edmund Burke

1001 Arabian Nights

Hawaii; James Michener

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Robert Louis Stevenson

Don Quixote; Miguel Cervantes

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Jules Verne

I've never even heard of some of these books. I hope I'm going to be able to find them. And I hope inter-library loan isn't always charging me $3 a book, because our local public library isn't what you would call incredibly well-stocked.

I'm doing War and Peace next. I feel like "doing" is a better word than "reading", in this case, because I'm actively scared of this book. It is massive. It is the longest single book I've ever taken on and so far, in my life, I haven't been a fan of Russian literature. But Patrick promises me this is better than Notes from the Underground and I'm trying not to be intimidated by Leo Tolstoy. I'm also going to try to finish this book before January is over. And at the latest before mid-February. I haven't decided if I'm going to mid-book updates on how I feel about.

I feel so far like I've been really unfair about these books. I've done a lot of the proverbial judging by covers. That's not right. And I'm glad I'm learning my lesson about that.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

I had this novel in my head as a piece of rabid feminism. I think that's because it was in 10 Things I Hate About You, which I watched far too many times with my brother.

I guess it could be construed that way; it having been published in '71, and the way she goes on about sex and marriage, especially when she's lucid.

I think it's a well-written book. I'm not saying it's going to go into my favorites file, but the beginning is entertaining - the thoughts and actions of the main character college girl seem sort of true to form. What she wants from life and what annoys her, what disheartens her, all the everyday things she does, are understandable. It reads almost like some sort of sitcom.

And then everything changes and you're swept up into this different life and you're sucked into her pain and everything she doesn't understand and her disillusionment and learning why the novel is called the Bell Jar.

It's pretty dang good. But, it is without hope, which is why you won't see it on my bookshelf at home or in my favorites file (which exists in my head, so ... hopefully no one's gonna see that.)

I read this in a night. Less than. I started it at like 5:45 and finished it around 10. And that's with stopping for dinner and long chats with my husband, so if you're curious about it, it's not really a time-consuming read.

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

I made it my goal to finish this book today; because I knew it was going to disturb me and I didn't really want to prolong the experience.

I was right, too, by the way.

The first thing you have to put aside when you start this book is theology, if you care, which I do. The portrayal of heaven really bothered me at first because it was so based on the individual. But then I remembered this was a work of fiction and it didn't need to conform to reality; God, as I recall, is never mentioned in this entire work of human pain, difficult situations, growing up and letting go.

I'm not prepared to say that it was a bad book, because it wasn't. The characters were really well done. The narration, from the point of a murdered fourteen year old girl, sounded right.

It reminded me of Night Road, in a way, by Kristin Hannah.

I can't understand the depth of pain that encompasses the loss of a child, to violence or otherwise, so I have a really hard time understanding all of the differing reactions. I can only imagine how I would respond to that kind of a tragedy - and I would hope for myself that I would have both of my arms wrapped around God's knees and trusting Him - His plan. So when a story is told about this kind of grief, and God is left out of the picture, I can't understand it.

However. The book was well-written, if incredibly disturbing. I now need to go listen to something else to get parts of it out of my head. But I liked the ending. By the way.

Germinal, Emile Zola

I have an ambitious reading list for 2012. Ambitious is the word Patrick used. But I feel pretty good about having read one book already this year.

I started the year off with this book, Germinal by Emile Zola, because I was dreading it. And in a way, it was terrible. But it was also extremely compelling and interesting.

The action takes place during Napoleon III's reign. It takes place between a series of coal mines and is about the struggle between capitalism, socialism, and anarchism.

I appreciate the author's rather characterization of all three, which is rather objective, and that he seems to stress that no way is right when it goes too far.

One quote I particularly liked was from the main anarchist character to the socialist:

"Can you understand this? A couple of hat-makers at Marseilles have drawn the lucky number in a lottery - a prize of a hundred thousand francs - and straight away they have invested it in annuities, saying they were never going to work any more! Yes, all you French workers have that one idea: you want to dig up a treasure and live on it for evermore in selfish and lazy isolation. You make a great song against the rich, but when fortune gives you some money you haven't the guts to give it back to the poor. You will never deserve to be happy so long as you have personal possessions, and your hatred of the bourgeois simply comes from your mad desire to be bourgeois yourselves in their place!"

It seems like that is still true today. The loudest voices against capitalism are only the most envious.

It's true also that capitalism is wrong when it goes so far as to drive people to starvation and death, only because it can. Exploitation for profit is wrong.

The book is way better than my poor ability to describe it, especially at midnight. Zola gives amazing descriptions of factories and the degeneration of people into animals. I'd recommend it if you are interested in socialist or anarchist ideologies, or want an interesting and slightly challenging read. It does have some pretty horrifying descriptions of death and dying though, so be prepared.

I'm not sure what I'll read next, but Germinal was a great start to 2012.