A Girl, A Book, A Quote, A Question and Misery?

I enjoy leisure reading and, in my opinion, this is regrettably a dying passion in a world filled with the ease of electronic media. Nowadays, reading subtitles is enough for you to stake claim to the title "reader." Good literature is often relegated to collecting dust on shelves, or, if we are lucky, made into a blockbuster movie that ultimately fails to deliver the poetry of the written word.

Therefore, I would like to introduce one of my all time favorite "classics," which is represented by this girl:

- bonus points if you can figure out what book she is from!

So what prompted the appearance of this cover girl? It started off with a personal Contracts-final-exam review session that lasted a good 12 hours (Professor Chuang, I hope you are reading this!!), with about a 3 hour break in between that consisted of back-to-back Civil Procedure classes (Professor Kibel I hope you are reading this as well!!). Needless to say, by the time 10 pm rolled around, my brain started to wander, as it often does when over-caffeinated, sleep deprived, and just overall numb I was so energized by 15 hours of contracts review and civil procedure discussion, that I thought about re-reading Victor Hugo's 1200+ pages masterpiece!

After staring at my contracts book for a good half-a-day, somewhere, somehow, in the darkest recesses of my mind, my thoughts turned to a quote that seemed apt for the moment at hand:

- Gchat status > Facebook Status updates

Which in turn prompted this conversation:

- No, it is not a song

To summarize the conversation, the quote is from the novel Les Miserables and, translated, it means "books are cold but safe friends." The author, Victor Hugo, had an immense appreciation for the written word and this idea, embodied by the quote, stated that books might be indifferent and cold objects, but they serve as safe friends that will protect you from despair. Maybe thinking of this quote was my brain's subconscious way of telling me that I too can develop an appreciation for the written word found in a Contracts textbook... maybe.

I then realized that the quixotic quote was extracted from a novel titled Les Miserables, which translates to The Miserables, or The Wretched Ones. So basically, my brain was not really subconsciously encouraging me to keep at it, but really consciously mocking the miserable and wretched state I found myself in after an entire day of reviewing Contracts. (Professor Chuang, I hope you are not reading this!!).

So how in the world does this relate to Hong Kong or the preparation for Hong Kong? I don't know, but somehow omitting the fact that I have to prepare for finals before I leave seemed woefully unfair. <insert gratuitous self-pat on the back>