Ruminations on reading a brick
I've been having thinky thoughts this morning.
As some of you may know, I have this little Les Miserables obsession I've been cultivating for the past few months. And as part of any healthily growing Les Mis obsession, one begins to wonder about the book which started it all -- Les Miserables, affectionately called "The Brick", by Victor Hugo. These days, it's easy to pick it up free from B&N for the Nook, or Amazon for the Kindle, or simply off of Project Gutenberg. The point is, for someone only starting to dabble in the idea of reading that monstrosity, I wanted to dip my toes in first.
So, I did.
I downloaded it on the Kindle app for my tablet and did what any good e/R shipper does -- I did a search for Grantaire's name, because I just had to read that for myself. And I discovered in the reading that Victor Hugo... the man is a brilliant writer. I found myself staring at sentences and just thinking, "...how? How do you...? What? How did you do that??"
(I also found myself thinking... "Good grief, it's obvious that this man was paid by the word," sometimes, but that's another matter entirely. ^_~)
The point is, I wasn't just entranced by the e/R dynamic, I was entranced by Victor Hugo. I was entranced by the very structure of his sentences, his word choices and his paragraph and chapter construction. For the first time in a long time, I found myself reading, not just for the pleasure of the plotline and characters, but for the pleasure of deconstructing how it was done.
So, after skimming through a decent amount of the student subplot, I went back to the beginning of the book and began to read. And within the first three pages, I had problems. First: Due to the constraints of page size, one page of the Brick spreads over multiple pages on a Kindle app, thus occasionally causing a single paragraph to spread over 1, 2, and sometimes 3, pages... and that is very difficult to read. Second: I did not live in the early 19th century, nor did I study it extensively in school. Victor Hugo, having done so, refers to what were then current events with the casual air assumed by one who has absolute faith that their reader will understand the reference, being as they lived it, too. Since I didn't, I found myself having to look up quite a few things as I read. And, third: Victor Hugo was obviously widely read and studied. He name-drops historical figures like it's going out of style. Certainly, one can get a brief understanding of the person whose name was dropped from the context of the paragraph, but if one actually knows a bit about the person... rather than getting a bit of information about a person from the paragraph, one finds that knowing the person gives one a much deeper understanding of what is going on in that section of the Brick.
Could I have skimmed over those things to get to the plot? Certainly. Could I enjoy the Brick without understanding all these things? Certainly. But, the more I read, the more I developed an appreciation for not only how Hugo writes, but how he thinks. And I wanted to understand as many references as I could so I could try to decode what he was thinking as he wrote that section and why he constructed that section as he did.
And that kind of reading takes effort. It can't be done quickly. I liken it to a rich chocolate mousse cake -- you could scarf it down and reach for the next slice, possibly devouring several before your stomach declares itself too full to proceed any further... or you can savor each bite as it goes down and stop when you're sated instead of overstuffed.
I've never read a book like that before. I've never read a book this slowly before. In the two (I think?) months since I began reading the Brick, I've progressed 35 pages. (Grant you, I been taking hiatuses in between readings, but there are at least eight or nine sessions accounted for in there.) Reading this book is a challenge and it's one I am thoroughly enjoying meeting.
Most often, I find myself reading a book to find out what happens at the end. I certainly enjoy the journey as I go, but I never lose sight of the fact that my goal is to get to the end. With Les Miserables, I'm finding that not to be the case. First of all... I already know what happens at the end. I've seen the musical. Everybody dies. (See? People were Joss Whedon long before Joss Whedon was Joss Whedon. ;D) So, I find myself not so eager to get to the end and instead, I dawdle along at the beginning. I research every name I don't know, I look up every word which is unfamiliar, and read up on history I've forgotten or never learned.
I savor each sentence like a bite of rich chocolate mousse cake.
And as I savor each bite, there is always a part of me trying to figure out the ingredients and how they were put together to make this magnificence. You see... sometimes Hugo rambles on about inanities because he was paid by the word. That is painfully obvious. He often takes two pages to make a point he could have made in two sentences. However, sometimes his rambling isn't rambling, at all. It is such a meticulously constructed argument that you aren't even aware that he's leading you somewhere until -- BAM! -- you've reached the conclusion and understanding it is the most natural thing in the world... even if (especially if), that conclusion isn't one you ever would have drawn on your own. And when that happens, I find that I have to stop reading and just bask in it for a minute before I can continue.
It's the closest I've ever come to a book giving me a "religious experience."
Now, as I've said, I began reading The Brick on my tablet. Why? Well, it was free... and it's not called "The Brick" for nothing. No one wants to drag that around and most of my reading lately has been done "one the go." For someone who got a merit scholarship to college based in no small part on her visceral and vehement defense of the physical written word... I've been doing a lot of reading on my tablet lately. I can't remember the last time I picked up a physical book. I bought a hardback of Les Mis, but I hadn't cracked it open. Not really.
Until today.
Today, like the two days before it, has been gloriously cool in the mornings, amidst a span of days where it has been far too hot. So, today, I took my physical copy of The Brick and my cup of tea and settled in on the porch. I still looked up every name I didn't know. I still had to give myself brief history lessons every third paragraph. The difference? I no longer felt like I was struggling. Where before I had not managed more than three or four pages in a sitting, today I read 7 with far less strain.
The difference the proper format can make.
So, what's the point? I'm not sure I have one other than this: I feel like I have gone back and rediscovered the process of reading and decoding a book. And, for a change, I find myself reading on a much deeper level and taking away far more from a book than I have in quite a long time. I feel like I'm meeting a very old friend again after a long time apart. I've rediscovered my love for the written word and the process by which it is created. If I loved nothing more about Les Miserables, that would be enough. It may take me another four-six months (or more), at this rate, to finish this book. I relish it... and I'm going to savor each bite.
As some of you may know, I have this little Les Miserables obsession I've been cultivating for the past few months. And as part of any healthily growing Les Mis obsession, one begins to wonder about the book which started it all -- Les Miserables, affectionately called "The Brick", by Victor Hugo. These days, it's easy to pick it up free from B&N for the Nook, or Amazon for the Kindle, or simply off of Project Gutenberg. The point is, for someone only starting to dabble in the idea of reading that monstrosity, I wanted to dip my toes in first.
So, I did.
I downloaded it on the Kindle app for my tablet and did what any good e/R shipper does -- I did a search for Grantaire's name, because I just had to read that for myself. And I discovered in the reading that Victor Hugo... the man is a brilliant writer. I found myself staring at sentences and just thinking, "...how? How do you...? What? How did you do that??"
(I also found myself thinking... "Good grief, it's obvious that this man was paid by the word," sometimes, but that's another matter entirely. ^_~)
The point is, I wasn't just entranced by the e/R dynamic, I was entranced by Victor Hugo. I was entranced by the very structure of his sentences, his word choices and his paragraph and chapter construction. For the first time in a long time, I found myself reading, not just for the pleasure of the plotline and characters, but for the pleasure of deconstructing how it was done.
So, after skimming through a decent amount of the student subplot, I went back to the beginning of the book and began to read. And within the first three pages, I had problems. First: Due to the constraints of page size, one page of the Brick spreads over multiple pages on a Kindle app, thus occasionally causing a single paragraph to spread over 1, 2, and sometimes 3, pages... and that is very difficult to read. Second: I did not live in the early 19th century, nor did I study it extensively in school. Victor Hugo, having done so, refers to what were then current events with the casual air assumed by one who has absolute faith that their reader will understand the reference, being as they lived it, too. Since I didn't, I found myself having to look up quite a few things as I read. And, third: Victor Hugo was obviously widely read and studied. He name-drops historical figures like it's going out of style. Certainly, one can get a brief understanding of the person whose name was dropped from the context of the paragraph, but if one actually knows a bit about the person... rather than getting a bit of information about a person from the paragraph, one finds that knowing the person gives one a much deeper understanding of what is going on in that section of the Brick.
Could I have skimmed over those things to get to the plot? Certainly. Could I enjoy the Brick without understanding all these things? Certainly. But, the more I read, the more I developed an appreciation for not only how Hugo writes, but how he thinks. And I wanted to understand as many references as I could so I could try to decode what he was thinking as he wrote that section and why he constructed that section as he did.
And that kind of reading takes effort. It can't be done quickly. I liken it to a rich chocolate mousse cake -- you could scarf it down and reach for the next slice, possibly devouring several before your stomach declares itself too full to proceed any further... or you can savor each bite as it goes down and stop when you're sated instead of overstuffed.
I've never read a book like that before. I've never read a book this slowly before. In the two (I think?) months since I began reading the Brick, I've progressed 35 pages. (Grant you, I been taking hiatuses in between readings, but there are at least eight or nine sessions accounted for in there.) Reading this book is a challenge and it's one I am thoroughly enjoying meeting.
Most often, I find myself reading a book to find out what happens at the end. I certainly enjoy the journey as I go, but I never lose sight of the fact that my goal is to get to the end. With Les Miserables, I'm finding that not to be the case. First of all... I already know what happens at the end. I've seen the musical. Everybody dies. (See? People were Joss Whedon long before Joss Whedon was Joss Whedon. ;D) So, I find myself not so eager to get to the end and instead, I dawdle along at the beginning. I research every name I don't know, I look up every word which is unfamiliar, and read up on history I've forgotten or never learned.
I savor each sentence like a bite of rich chocolate mousse cake.
And as I savor each bite, there is always a part of me trying to figure out the ingredients and how they were put together to make this magnificence. You see... sometimes Hugo rambles on about inanities because he was paid by the word. That is painfully obvious. He often takes two pages to make a point he could have made in two sentences. However, sometimes his rambling isn't rambling, at all. It is such a meticulously constructed argument that you aren't even aware that he's leading you somewhere until -- BAM! -- you've reached the conclusion and understanding it is the most natural thing in the world... even if (especially if), that conclusion isn't one you ever would have drawn on your own. And when that happens, I find that I have to stop reading and just bask in it for a minute before I can continue.
It's the closest I've ever come to a book giving me a "religious experience."
Now, as I've said, I began reading The Brick on my tablet. Why? Well, it was free... and it's not called "The Brick" for nothing. No one wants to drag that around and most of my reading lately has been done "one the go." For someone who got a merit scholarship to college based in no small part on her visceral and vehement defense of the physical written word... I've been doing a lot of reading on my tablet lately. I can't remember the last time I picked up a physical book. I bought a hardback of Les Mis, but I hadn't cracked it open. Not really.
Until today.
Today, like the two days before it, has been gloriously cool in the mornings, amidst a span of days where it has been far too hot. So, today, I took my physical copy of The Brick and my cup of tea and settled in on the porch. I still looked up every name I didn't know. I still had to give myself brief history lessons every third paragraph. The difference? I no longer felt like I was struggling. Where before I had not managed more than three or four pages in a sitting, today I read 7 with far less strain.
The difference the proper format can make.
So, what's the point? I'm not sure I have one other than this: I feel like I have gone back and rediscovered the process of reading and decoding a book. And, for a change, I find myself reading on a much deeper level and taking away far more from a book than I have in quite a long time. I feel like I'm meeting a very old friend again after a long time apart. I've rediscovered my love for the written word and the process by which it is created. If I loved nothing more about Les Miserables, that would be enough. It may take me another four-six months (or more), at this rate, to finish this book. I relish it... and I'm going to savor each bite.