"The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" by Victor Hugo

Um, yeah.  So, the best thing I can say about this book is that, now that I've read it, I never have to read it again.

It's not that I don't enjoy tragedies.  I mean, this is the person who has seen nineteen different versions of Hamlet, many of them multiple times.  I like a good, sad story.

So it's not the tragicality that made me dislike this book.  It's the fatalism.  The bleak flavor that permeates it.  Hugo seems to be saying that fate dictates how everything will turn out, what everyone wil...