Recently, my foray into the classics I never read took me to "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Hugo spends 30 pages or so on an aerial view of Paris, which means nothing to you unless you've been there, and likewise another 30 or so describing the cathedral. There were a few other blocks of pages describing things I've wiped from my memory. And of course, every version in popular circulation is wrong. They all die. Pointlessly. I suppose that's why it's a classic. I'm actually glad I read it, to say I have and to find out that all the movies are wrong, but it will be the one time in my life I do.