I hate the french!!!!

[icenine]

They have had some great authors most Americans never will read. Like you know I read Marcel Proust a couple of years ago and Stendahl's The Red and The Black. I have been picking up Emile Zola novels but just have not gotten around to reading them yet.
There is one Zola novel called Germinal about a mining strike by French laborers that some say is one of the greatest novels ever. The author describes the horrific conditions in the mines where the horses they use are sometimes born underground and are blind because they never see the sun their whole lives.

I got to read that soon.