I need to come up with better ways of titling book thoughts posts

[sophia_sol]

Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, FMA translation

WOO I FINISHED MY REREAD, and in only 18 days! The reason I chose now to reread is because Melannen decided to do a Les Mis podcast episode (a guest episode on /report) and wanted other people to join her. I volunteered, and immediately found myself considering that the obvious thing to do would be to reread the brick beforehand so I'd be well up on the details.

We recorded the podcast on Saturday, and alas I was a hundred pages shy of the end at the time of recording. SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR.

The podcast was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to hearing the final cut! (you can get a sneak peek with the following clip: Les Old Mens de l'ABC.) But in the meantime I need to tell you my les mis thoughts, I guess, since it is a Thing I Do that I post about all the books I read!

Here's the thing: there's so much book it's hard to know what to comment on in particular? And I've spent so much time buried in Les Mis meta over the last eleven months that it's even harder to know what to comment on.

I suppose it comes to this: it's a great book and I had lots of thoughts and feels. Probably more of both than last time because I've spent the last PRACTICALLY A YEAR buried in les mis feels and meta on tumblr.

And I was glad that on my first read I'd done my duty by reading even the most awkward Marius bits (ie the Gorbeau house incident and the handkerchief incident), so I could feel free to skim quickly over them this time.

Also I was pleasantly surprised with how readable I found the Waterloo digression this time round! Hugo tells you at the beginning of the digression that he's not doing a history and that he expects the reader to already be familiar with all the details of Waterloo, but somehow I didn't successfully take that to heart the first time and spent the whole digression attempting to follow the exact events of the day and who was doing what and so forth. HAHAHA Hugo is no help there. And since I already understood that going in this time, that Hugo only touches on the parts that are relevant to his point, it was much easier to get through and also actually interesting!


Murder in the Cathedral, by TS Eliot

An odd sort of work. It was a quick read but I DEFINITELY didn't get everything out of it that the reader (or watcher) is supposed to. It's a play about the murder of the Archbishop Thomas Becket, written in the late 1930's. The first half is the weirdest and the hardest to follow, because it's not really a play that's strong on plot? The interlude with the sermon by Thomas is interesting, though, and then the second half is improved by the fact that there are Things Actually Happening, namely the killing of Thomas. My favourite part is the bit immediately following the murder, where the four knights (the murderers) explain to the audience why their action was justifiable.

But I am clearly missing a LOT of historical context, because Eliot was clearly trying to say something with this play, and I have the feeling it's relatively anvilicious. But I have no idea what because I don't know anything about the political circumstances or historical events surrounding Thomas Becket, other than what's explicated in the play. And I don't know enough about the political atmosphere in the time the play was written either.

So I'm glad I read it, but I would have been better served reading it in the context of a class, I think.


Energy and Equity, by Ivan Illich

This is a nonfiction book from the 70's about, well, what the title says: energy and equity. In particular this book is focusing on energy and equity in the case of traffic.

The first chapter ("Energy Crisis") is rather too dense and obscure in that overly-academic sort of way. I spent most of the chapter mentally shouting at the author, "EXPLAIN YOUR TERMS" and "I'M PRETTY SURE YOU ARE NOT PROVIDING EVIDENCE FOR YOUR STATEMENTS BUT IT IS HARD TO TELL. SHAPE UP."

The rest of the book is a lot more readable and indeed interesting. And the book has some very valid points to make about the inequality that comes from an energy-dependent society! But on the other hand the book has this overall tone of 1) nostalgia for the good old days and 2) suspicion towards technology in general -- and these rather undermined my willingness to buy into the author's arguments.