My mother taught me the word "milquetoast" when I was a child, because that's how she felt about Marius. When I read it myself I realized how perfectly accurate her description is.

Things might have also been very different if Franklin had believed and validated Eva instead of ignoring her concerns. I'm sure Eva's coldness was all the worse because she felt so alone in the struggle.

My family had a movie directory that was basically IMDb in book form. It was published in the early 90s and was about 3 inches thick. It had thousands of entries with a brief synopsis, year of release, key cast and crew, etc., all cross-referenced. Then separate indexes so you could look things up movie titles, actors, or directors. We were all cinephiles and it was beloved like an heirloom family Bible. We used it daily.