Hugo

I am in the middle of reading the unbridged Les Miserables (Julie Rose translation).  I started it last summer and I am still plugging away.  I have read some other books in between.  It is so long and epic, I don't feel bad putting it down and picking it back up after catching up on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.*  I should have a wager with myself: will I finish my daughter's quilt or Les Miserables first?  It will be a tortoise race, for sure.

Hugo has so much empathy.

empathy |ˈempəθē|nounthe ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Some writers create heros and villains.  Hugo creates humanity.  He has everyone -- from the Bishop and his sister, the convict, the beautiful young girl who becomes a prostitute, the business owner, the general, the police, nuns, the orphan, the lowlife opportunistic scoundrels, students, urchins (or gamin), aristocrats, gravediggers, factory workers, and on.  (And I am only halfway through the book.**)  His empathy doesn't mean he likes all of his characters.  It means he understands them, the good and the bad.  He also treats them fairly, even the Thenardiers.
I tag my favorite quotations in the book.  In addition to complex and vivid characters, Hugo writes a lot about politics and philosophy.  Since I just finished my volunteer job helping parents advocate for their children, here is passage that struck me:
"[Combeferre] claimed that the future was in the hands of the schoolmaster and got involved in issues of education.  He wanted society to work tirelessly at raising intellectual and moral standards, popularizing science, circulating ideas and cultivating the minds of the young, and he feared that the current impoverishment of the methods employed, the dire narrowness of teaching literature, which was limited to two or three centuries said to be "classical," the tyrannical dogmatism of the official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines, would wind up turning our colleges into artificial oyster farms."
One hundred and fifty years later, civilization is continuing to have this conversation, just like philosophers continue to wonder about the meaning of life and astronomers wonder if there is other intelligent life in the universe.

* Parts of Wimpy Kid are the funniest things I have ever read.  He really understands the middle school mind.** My elementary school teachers said never start a sentence with "and" or "because."  I have known this is bad form since I was six.  Sorry.