Le Misanthrope (75 Books - XV)

I’m afraid I won’t have much to say on this one, for a few reasons:

1. Wi-fi router problems mean I’m writing on a smartphone right now. Bad times.
2. I read this largely out of a sense of duty because of Molière’s reputation. The premise isn’t very appealing to me (my edition calls the play a “comedy of manners”).
3. Plays are meant to be performed, not read. My favourite Shakespeare play is Richard III, and my favourite play overall is Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Not coincidentally, these are two of the only ones I’ve seen performed live.
4. I read this partly as a way to practice my French. I found that, though I understood most of the words okay, following the sense of everything was difficult. This is a student edition, and I relied more heavily than I’d like on the annotations and summaries. No surprise that 17th century French is more difficult than, say, Chihayafuru, but I’d always thought of vocabulary as my biggest linguistic obstacle; I’ve now run into something new.

So, I’ve found myself in a two-book slump, though in neither case would I blame the author. My next book, besides continuing with Watamote, is a return to history with Diplomacy, by Henry Kissinger.