Category: Chapter-a-Day Read-Along
Welcome to the Prologue to Don Quixote, the beginning of the 2019 Chapter-a-Day Read-along! In order to read exactly 365 chapters this year, I am counting the prologue to Part 1 as a chapter (and will do so again at the beginning of Part 2), so we won’t start the actual story until tomorrow, January 2. Though the story hasn’t begun yet, you can already get a sense of Cervantes’ humor as he worries about how his book will be received and frets that it will not contain enough...
After one of my most productive reading years ever in 2017, 2018 was a bit of a dip for me. I had to abandon most of my reading challenges because any free time I had was taken up by principal certification classes and getting used to my new role as an elementary school principal. Still, I was able to read quite a few books this year, and here are the details, with stats according to Goodreads: I read 38 books, consisting of 12,182 number of pages. Not a...
Congratulations on reading one of the great works of world literature! Whether you finished Les Misérables early, on time, or not yet, thank you for participating. I hope the read-along was as enriching for you as it was for me. (If you liked the experience of reading classic literature in one chapter a day, please consider joining the 2019 Chapter-a-Day Read-along.) You now know some of the most memorable characters in literature: Jean Valjean. Fantine. Cosette. Javert. The Thenardiers. Eponine. Gavroche. Marius. The Friends of the ABC. My hope...
Why read Don Quixote? It remains the best as well as the first of all the novels…There are parts of yourself you will not know fully until you know, as well as you can, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. – Harold Bloom This is it, the grand novel of them all, the novel above all other novels: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Many of my friends think that my favorite novel is either Lord of the Rings or Les Misérables, and while I love Tolkien’s trilogy and Hugo’s magnum...
This is the official sign-up post for the 2019 Chapter-a-Day Read-along. The Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along was so much fun in 2018 that I’m happy to host another one for 2019. The thing is, there aren’t too many books that have exactly 365 chapters. In fact, I know of only two: Les Misérables and War and Peace. I took a poll among my readers, and the vast majority of responders were not interested in reading War and Peace next year. So, rather than focus on one book in 2019,...
Well, this is it, ten days left in the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along! Are you still on track to finish? Have you already finished? I apologize again for not having many updates after I changed jobs and started back to school. Hopefully that didn’t derail your plans to read the book. For those of you in the Spokane area, I am hosting a Les Misérables Live Final Chapter Reading and Celebration at St. John Vianney Catholic School on December 31 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. I’ll read the final...
Welcome to the fifth and final Volume of Les Misérables: “Jean Valjean.” Incredibly, this is day 299 of the 365-day Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along. Even though my new job has prevented me from doing much blogging these days, I still plan on doing a wrap-up of the read-along, including some sort of live broadcast of the last chapter, or something similar. If you have an idea for that, leave it in the comments section below or on Twitter with the #lesmisreadalong hashtag. Thank you for keeping up with the...
Congratulations to everyone participating in the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along! You’re halfway done! Yesterday marked chapter 183, just over halfway through the 365 chapters of Les Misérables. If you’re on schedule, then you’re in the middle of Volume 3, Book 5, Virtue in Adversity. This is one of my favorite books in the novel because of the way Marius learns from his poverty, and because I think it embodies the core of Hugo’s message. I think if Hugo were to subtitle the book, then Virtue in Adversity would make...
Today is day 127 of the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along, which is about a third of the way through the book. For those who are participating, well done. It’s not easy to limit yourself to a few pages a day, especially when you have to leave characters behind for a week or more to read Hugo’s digressions. If you’re staying with the schedule, then right now you’re in the middle of reading the history of the Convent of the Petit Picpus. Like the chapters on Waterloo, this can be...
When I taught Les Misérables to eighth graders, one of my favorite assignments was a final project in which students were to choose contemporary songs to go along with the book. I always loved seeing the connections students made between the novel and popular culture. Inevitably, at least one student would choose Abba’s “Waterloo,” but there were also some very original choices as well. In the early years of the project, students turned their songs in on cassette tapes, but over time they switched to CDs. I wonder, If...
As we enter week 14 of the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along, the story moves from the Battle of Waterloo back to the more personal stories of Jean Valjean and Cosette. One of the things I noticed as I read the chapters for this week was Hugo’s continued use of star imagery. Here’s what stood out to me as I was reading: The ship at the center of the action this week is named Orion, not only the hunter of Greek mythology, but also one of the brightest constellations in...
Yesterday, April 1, besides being Easter Sunday, was also the one quarter mark in our Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along, based on the number of chapters read. Congratulations for making it this far, and thanks for staying with the read-along to this point. Here’s what it means to have read the first twenty-five percent of Les Misérables together: Ninety-one chapters read, including: Fourteen chapters on the Bishop of Digne Nineteen chapters on the Battle of Waterloo Almost one hundred tweets with the #lesmisreadalong hashtag, including: Favorite quotes from each chapter Pictures...
