Archive for Victor Hugo
yet another list of 100 “best novels”
Posted in Books, Statistics with tags authors, best novels, book list, English literature, French literature, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings, Kazuo Ishiguro, NYT, Russian literature, Susanna Clarke, The Guardian, The Lord of The Ring, The New York Times, The North, Ursula Le Guin, Victor Hugo on June 15, 2026 by xi'an
back on trance
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel with tags fire services, France, Gothic cathedral, Grand Organ, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Paris, restauration, rosace, stained glass, Victor Hugo, Violet-Leduc on December 8, 2024 by xi'an
reading highlights
Posted in Books, Kids with tags Arto Paasilinna, Burial Rites, Céline, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Karen Blixen, Kazuo Ishiguro, Marguerite Yourcenar, Moby Dick, The Remains of the Day, Victor Hugo, Voyage au Bout de la Nuit on January 10, 2021 by xi'an
A reading questionnaire I picked somewhere I cannot remember, a while ago, and filled in the lazy days after X’mas… Could have substituted each entry with dozens of others.
- Your first memorable reading experience : La Panthère Blanche (a pre-1960 children book about an albinos jaguar in the Amazonia I kept reading as a kid, and then I switched to compulsive bi-yearly reads of David Copperfield…)
- Your hidden masterpiece : Kent’s Burial Rites
- An official masterpiece you could not complete : Melville’s Moby Dick (too much technical jargon)
- A writer you would dream to meet : Patrick Rothfuss (so that I could hear the end of the trilogy!), Karen Blixen, Victor Hugo, many others
- A favourite writer you would rather not meet : Louis Céline (definitely not a favourite person!)
- A book you would like to be the main character : Zeno in Yourcenar’s L’Œuvre au Noir (The Abyss)
- A book you offer by default : Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
- A book that makes you laugh out loud : Paasilina’s The Year of the Hare
- A book you would rather read in the vernacular : every book not written in French or English
Wagram, morne plaine!
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running with tags accident, Arc de Triomphe, Avenue de Wagram, bicycle, farmers' market, Napoléon Bonaparte, Paris, Victor Hugo, Waterloo on November 20, 2020 by xi'an
Avenue de Wagram is one of the avenues leaving from Arc de Triomphe in Paris, named after a (bloody) Napoléonic battle (1809). This is also where I locked my bike today before joining my son for a quick lunch and where I found my back wheel completely dismantled when I came back! Not only the wheel had been removed from the frame, but the axle had been taken away, damaging the ball bearing… After much cursing, I looked around for the different pieces and remounted the wheel on the bike. The return home to the local repair shop was slower than usual as the wheel was acting as a constant brake. I am somewhat bemused at this happening in the middle of the day, on a rather busy street and at the motivation for it. Disgruntled third year student furious with the mid-term exam? Unhappy author after a Biometrika rejection?
Not a great week for biking since I also crashed last weekend on my way back from the farmers’ market when my pannier full of vegetables got caught in between the spokes. Nothing broken, apart from a few scratches and my cell phone screen… [Note: the title is stolen from Hugo’s Waterloo! Morne plaine!, a terrible and endless poem about the ultimate battle of Napoléon in 1815. With a tenth of the deaths at Wagram… Unsurprisingly, no Avenue de Waterloo leaves from Arc de Triomphe! ]
