Zola is so weird, man. This is my second Rougon-Macquart (after The Belly of Paris--I understand this is a weird order in which to read them but I'm just doing my own thing) and despite how unsettling I find some of the sexual politics and Zola's clear eugenicist leanings they're just so much fun to read? Compared to Belly, Germinal is a far more harrowing story touching some of the worst and most complicated topics you could touch today. That's what I find so fascinating about it, aside from the prose: absolutely nothing has changed except the technology and perhaps the ways we write about these things. I'm kinda mad this book was never mentioned to me in my schooling because I think it's far more interesting than a lot of the stuff I was told about.