Dangerous Book #6

I'm halfway through my dangerous book task, although it's true that I only had three books on the list to start with and have been declaring books dangerous as they arrive. But in August I finally read all of Hunchback of Notre Dame. I'm actually a little surprised that I was so scared of this book. I think what probably made me put it down in high school is the language, it's fairly challenging and convoluted. However now that I've read Moby Dick, I'm not sure I'll run into that problem again. Ok, that's asking for it, but I still feel like archaic sentence structure is much easier to tackle than it used to be.

Hunchback turned out to be an enjoyable, tragic action adventure, filled with lust and intrigue. In many ways it was soap operaish and predictable, but there was enough humor to keep it interesting. I'm glad I tried it again.

It was also good timing, to read it right before going to Paris. It has such lavish detail of the streets, it was almost a map (for that time period). In fact, the book is what prompted the restoration of the Notre Dame cathedral itself, as people had such a clear mental image of what it could be.