Les Mis in a Month: Final week

Finished on Saturday! It took a lot of listening and a little bit of skipping [1], but I made it through!

Am I glad I did it? Yes. Am I glad to be done? Double yes. I think if I ever read something this big again, I'll break it up into chunks: read for a few weeks, break, read some more. Hopefully it would help the reading fatigue. I'm afraid the second half of Les Mis didn't get a fair shake from me, since I was just so tired of reading it by page 700. 

That said, Hugo is dramatic as heck. Sometimes I couldn't help but laugh at Marius, Cosette, Valjean, Eponine - all of them, really. I know their lives were hard, and it's an epic tale told epically, but geez. 

Some thoughts: 
- Name play an important role; the main characters all get at least a few
- The story's really about saving Cosette, isn't it? 
- The sewer tangent was really not as bad as people make it out to be. Granted, I skipped it, but I think it was only 15 or 20 pages, instead of the 50 pages of the Waterloo tangent. 
- Marius is very irritating there at the end, forbidding this gentle, loving man from seeing his daughter. And he's not even man enough to do it directly! No, it's all, "take away a chair here," "don't light a fire" there. Passive-aggressive nonsense. He reminds me of Claudius from Much Ado in a lot of ways - jumping to conclusions, being extra, overwhelmed by love. 

xo, 
Devo

[1] For a regular book, I would have skipped a lot - about a hundred pages or so. When your book is 1400 pages, though, 100 is hardly anything. 

Les Mis in a Month: Week 3

I'm a little late, but here's the Les Mis thoughts for last week.

- Made it past page 1000, which feels like a milestone...can I count this book as like, 4 books on my read-list, seeing as how it's so long? I learned that it's 1900 pages in the original French to which I say: Slow Your Roll, Victor Hugo.
- I'm starting to get a little bored/fatigued. It. Just. Keeps. Going. The plot has drawn away from Valjean and towards Marius & Cosette, who I cared very little about in the musical and continue to care little about in the book. Their love scenes are hilariously dramatic in the book, though, which is a certain kind of entertainment.
- Find myself enjoying the minor characters more in this second half: Gavroche (who knew he was Thenardier's son??), Monsieur Mabeuf (seriously, I love him so much; his having to sell his books just about broke my heart), Marius' grandfather.
- I still have no idea what the revolution is about, why it's happening, or why Les Amis are invested in it. Seriously, I know more about Mabeuf's motivations and feel more strongly for him than for Enjolras.
- Hugo's tangent about argot was both fascinating and ridiculous.
- Still no sewers.

xo,
Devo

Les Mis in a Month: Week 2

I just rounded page 700, which means I'm halfway through and pretty proud of myself. Still haven't hit the infamous sewer section, though. 

Progress/Thoughts
- Gotta love Hugo: At one chapter's end he's all, "Let me tell you about Marius" - and then immediately begins the next chapter like, "So this Monsieur Gillenormand..."
- Names for the main [1] character, so far: 1) Jean Valjean; 2) Prisoner 24601; 3) Father/Monsieur Madeleine; 4) Monsieur le Maire; 5) Prisoner 9430; 6) Ultimus Fauchelevent; 7) Monsieur Leblanc
- Hugo is a fan of physiognomy 
- I care a lot less about this second half of the book, at least so far. 

xo, 
Devo

[1] YMMV on who's the main character, Hugo sure does

Book challenge: Les Mis in a Month

I'm doing it. The unabridged brick and me, we're taking a journey together this month. If you want to join me, you have to read 50 pages a day to finish (so, a few more now to catch up). Despite being up to approximately page 275, which for most other books would be almost near the end - or at least halfway - 275 is barely a drop in this 1400-plus page bucket.

I'm reading it on paper and listening to the audiobook, in combo. Trying to set myself up to succeed, y'know. I listen to it when I take walks and then read whatever's left at the end of the day. Though I'm not a huge audiobook fan (nor am I a fan of this narrator), it's been helpful for Les Mis: not only can I listen while doing other things, the emotion of the narrator adds to the story. While Hugo is a big fan of description and repetition, he's not so much on description-of-dialog. Is the character sarcastic? dramatic? sincere? Because the book is from a very different time, and I've not studied this period of literature, I find it difficult to successfully interpret the emotional valence.

I'll give you weekly updates of my progress and thoughts, bullet-style:

- I'm slightly behind (need to read ~20 pages from yesterday, plus today's pages), but am mostly on track.
- The saintly bishop is my favorite so far.
- Valjean's waffling about whether or not to turn himself in is super anxiety-provoking. I know that feel, bro.
- The musical is sad; this is sadder (probably due to that Hugo-ian penchant for repetition).
- Though, I'm surprised at how close (at least so far) the musical is faithful to the book.
- *run into a dream sequence* Not even for you Hugo; I'm skipping that nonsense.
- The chapters are short, so you get a nice steady sense of progress.
- Themes so far: the beast within; honor (external) vs. honesty (internal); The Law and The Religion
- Those Thenardiers are truly awful, aren't they?

xo,
Devo