{"id":5494,"date":"2017-11-06T20:07:19","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T04:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=5494"},"modified":"2017-11-07T07:02:12","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T15:02:12","slug":"nonfiction-november-2017-week-2-book-pairing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/nonfiction-november-2017-week-2-book-pairing","title":{"rendered":"Nonfiction November 2017 Week 2: Book Pairing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for another Nonfiction November post. After reading last week’s posts my TBR pile has already grown! For a roundup of last week, see the links at JulzReads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This week Sarah at Sarah’s Bookshelves<\/a> hosts one of my favorite events of Nonfiction November, Book Pairings:<\/p>\n

This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a \u201cIf you loved this book, read this!\u201d or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it\u2019s a historical novel and you\u2019d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This year I’m pairing up one of my favorite books of all time with one of my favorite books of the year:<\/p>\n

\"Les

Les Mis\u00e9rables by Victor Hugo and The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Mis\u00e9rables by David Bellos<\/p><\/div>\n

Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em><\/h2>\n

\"TheLes Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> by Victor Hugo is as poetically beautiful a story as you’re ever going to read. I taught this book for over twenty years, rereading it every year, and it never got old. A sweeping storyline, unforgettable characters, a rich tapestry of language–Les Mis\u00e9rables\u00a0<\/em>has it all, and then some.<\/p>\n

As with every classic work of literature,\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>\u00a0is worth reading by every human being regardless of where or when they live. As Hugo himself said the in the preface to\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables,<\/em><\/p>\n

so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because ignorance and misery still exist, we continue to need\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables. <\/em>After more than 150 years it still\u00a0has the power to move readers to tears, to anger, and to change their lives. Hugo’s novel can be truly transforming. I have seen it profoundly affect the lives of students year after year. It truly is one of the world’s great novels.<\/p>\n

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em><\/h2>\n

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Mis\u00e9rables\u00a0<\/em>by David Bellos is a worthy tribute to Hugo’s novel, as well as indispensable aid to understanding it better. You can read my full review here<\/a>, but the quick lowdown is that David Bellos has done a marvelous job of opening up\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> for the reader, regardless of how familiar one is with the novel.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables\u00a0<\/em>Chapter-a-Day Read-along<\/h2>\n

[Deep breath. Ok, here goes.] I am going to venture into the world of hosting a read-along. And not just any read-along. A read-along of the one of the longest books ever written. As David Bellos mentions in\u00a0The Novel of the Century<\/em>,\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables\u00a0<\/em>has 365 chapters, one for every day of the year. Please join me in reading this profoundly transformative novel in 2018, one chapter each day, from January 1 to December 31, 2018.<\/p>\n

In the next week I will have a formal post announcing the read-along with all the details, but I wanted to mention it now for two reasons. One, I want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And two, I want to force myself to follow through on this by putting it into writing publicly. I am both excited and nervous about hosting a read-along, but I’m hoping there are some kindred souls out there who are willing to take a chance on a first-time reading challenge host. Please consider joining me in what I believe will be a powerful experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time for another Nonfiction November post. After reading last week’s posts my TBR pile has already grown! For a roundup of last week, see the links at JulzReads. This week Sarah at Sarah’s Bookshelves hosts one of my favorite events of Nonfiction November, Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a \u201cIf you loved this book, read this!\u201d or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it\u2019s a historical novel and you\u2019d like to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Nonfiction November 2017: Book Pairing","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[36,929,369,833,832,899],"class_list":["post-5494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-book-recommendations","tag-david-bellos","tag-les-miserables","tag-nonfiction","tag-nonfiction-november","tag-readalong"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/BellosBanner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-1qC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5494"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5511,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions\/5511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}