A Weighty Tome: 2019 Challenge: Les Miserables

[Cat]

Congrats Judy! I'm still only at 31%,and SO looking forward to when I start escalating into crazy romance & revolutionary plots...

[Judy]

Cat wrote: "Congrats Judy! I'm still only at 31%,and SO looking forward to when I start escalating into crazy romance & revolutionary plots..."

Thanks Cat! I believe in you 💪 it went by a lot quicker once we got to those more fun parts 😉

[Keely]

It does get interesting once you get past the nunnery bit. I will admit, I struggled a lot when I got to Volume 3 Marius because we were suddenly given new characters to learn about, but I was more interested in what Cosette and Jean Valjean were up to. But the Volume picked up and it made more sense towards the end. Thankfully Volume 4 seemed to have gotten back to the story much quicker than the other volumes, although I know I have the sewer part coming up eventually...

[Cat]

Who doesn't love 100pages of historical, socio-economic & philosophical musings in the midst of a cracking adventure story?

At least in Moby Dick it was all whale-related ramblings!

(I am NOT doing a buddy read of Moby Dick next year! #justsayin)

[Eldarwen]

Hahahaha, don't worry, I'm not very keen on reading Moby Dick so I'm definitely not going to push for that one. We do have a few other options in mind already though..... ;-))

Aaaanyway! Finally making my way into Marius, still behind, but I'm sort of used to that by now hehe.

Every time I think, "Oh! here we go!" the focus switches away and we still don't actually get much on Marius himself. (Starting the third book now.)

[Sammy]

Teehee. I really enjoyed Moby Dick. More than Les Mis, in fact. So much so I went out and bought a really lovely illustrated copy after I finished the boring audio one, lol.

[Cat]

You are a masochist, Sammy!

[Sammy]

Cat wrote: "You are a masochist, Sammy!"

I would be if I didn't enjoy it, but I thought it was incredibly funny, well-written and in parts very exciting too. I didn't think I'd enjoy it much before I started, but was very pleasantly surprised :)

[Cat]

I don't recall funny, but it was ages ago that I read it....

The occasional digs and sparks of humour in Les Mis are helping me cope with Hugo's penchant for wandering off just at a cliff-hangery moment

I'm now in Marius, and waiting for Hugo to introduce a notable old man, who, half a year after the reader knows it's JVJ, Hugo will go "oh! btw, this is our old friend JVJ - surprise!". #notsurprised

[Sammy]

Or maybe I just have an odd sense of humour :D

Cat wrote: "I'm now in Marius, and waiting for Hugo to introduce a notable old man, who, half a year after the reader knows it's JVJ, Hugo will go "oh! btw, this is our old friend JVJ - surprise!". #notsurprised"

Yes, he does that a lot! Makes you wonder if he thought the average reader was going to be a complete idiot...

[Eldarwen]

There was probably just such an enormously large amount of time between "chapter" publications that he felt the need to remind people.

[Cat]

Eldarwen wrote: "There was probably just such an enormously large amount of time between "chapter" publications that he felt the need to remind people."

Maybe, though the volumes appear to have been released in two chunks (March 1862 and May 1862), unlike Charles Dickens' serialisation approach. I think he just likes the comedy of either winding up the on-the-ball readers or the "D'oh!" exclamations of the slow-to-catch-on readers

[Eldarwen]

I'm pretty sure, he does, yes!! Very much so hehe.

[Marie (UK)]

I have been away for a month on the most fabulous cruise and am amazed at the number of people responding during that time it seems like people are really getting into it now.

PART FOUR

I like how Hugo constantly introduces new characters into the story line

Hugo treats us to another of his trreatments of the times as he discusses “Argot” or street language

I was taken by his definitions of Love
• “the cradle but also the coffin” p894
• “A complement is like a kiss through a veil” p 897

Also the meeting between Marius and his Grandfather was very well narrated and an example of what you mean to say and what you say being entirely different and on such conversations lives change for better or worse. I found myself thinking on this a lot as when you bring it into the modern day setting I find similar problems but magnified - just think how many tmes you have sent a text, message or simply put something on FaceAche only for it to be interpreted differently

Hugo is an excellent narrator and his plot lines merge and divide constantly. I find myself wanting to know what is happening to one set of characters but having to deal with others in between. His characters are full of life really leap off the page


 

[Cat]

Whoo-hooo! Part III finished! I'm now only 1 month behind schedule! TT is going to screw with my chances of keeping up progress though.

What stunned me in Part III is that Hugo didn't go "Fooled you! Monsieur Leblanc is not Monsieur Fabre but is in fact JVJ! You'd never have worked it out!"

I have to say, I'm not a fan of Marius. Never have been, with the musical version, the whiny annoying git. And the book version isn't redeeming him at all. Weird stalkery behaviour (however comical it also was) and then letting a gang of 8 beat up the father of the girl he "loves", because his father said to help Thenardier, even though his father DIDN'T know Thenardier from a bar of soap, Waterloo battlefield "rescue" notwithstanding!

Loved Javert's entrance though! "Do you want my hat?" hahahahaha!
Also - to the gun pointed at him from 3 feet away "You will miss". Shot fired. Missed.
Javert is ice!

[Judy]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Marius either - he had so much potential but his obsessive enthusiasm for whatever catches his fancy (his father, Thenardier, Cosette,...) got on my nerves quite a bit. It made him so blind to everything that is actually going on, which would be worth noticing!

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

So here's something a bit interesting.
I have been reading the book and decided I may switch to audio for a few days. I am up to Part 4, book 7 which in my book is called "Slang".
The audio book goes straight from book 6 to book 8.
Curious.
So I start reading book 7 and it really is all about slang.
So I go to schmoop to see what it says about book 7... and it also skips from book 6 to book 8.
Anyone else notice that in their versions?

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Judy wrote: "Cause I have just reached the sewer system section (while eating lunch...), sharing this seemed appropriate: https://twitter.com/SparkNotes/status..."

lol!
That is kind of like the Slang book I've just been reading. teehee

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Eldarwen wrote: "There was probably just such an enormously large amount of time between "chapter" publications that he felt the need to remind people."

Yes, that's what I thought too. Some of Dickens is similar because of the way they were published

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

@Judy - congrats on finishing! I will read your spoilers when I enventually finish ;)

@Marie - I hope you had a wonderful cruise!!! They are lovely lines. I always wonder when reading translations how true to the original those kinds of things are

@Cat - well done! Yes TT is going to ruin me too which is why I want to get what I can done over the next 4 days!! xD

[Moderators of NBRC, Challenger-in-Chief]

OCTOBER

This is catch up month and then just one volume to go!

[Sammy]

Karen ⊰✿ wrote: "So here's something a bit interesting.
I have been reading the book and decided I may switch to audio for a few days. I am up to Part 4, book 7 which in my book is called "Slang".
The audio book go..."

Oh no. My audio copy definitely didn't skip the slang. Every single darned word was accounted for! lol.

[Keely]

My audio copy also did not skip the slang part. Had I read it instead of listening to it, I would almost have certainly skimmed over it. I am curious to know how many time the word 'slang' was used, but you would have to pay me money to read or listen to that again to count. :P

I'm now up to Book 9 in Volume 4 so I am on track to being caught up by the end of the month.

[Keely]

I have finished Volume 4 and am now on the 5th and final volume.

I may have watched the 2012 film so I kinda spoiled it for myself, but there was so much detail lost. That was obviously going to happen given the length of the book, but the beginning was so rushed. Volume 1 of the book was given about 5-10 mins in the film.

Anyway, I plan to solider on with my audiobook and if I am able to listen to it as frequently as I have been then I will probably finish the whole book in the next week or two.

[Keely]

I finished it yesterday! What a relief. I won't say too much about it, only that I was pretty pleased with the ending even though it was dragged out a bit like the rest of the book.

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Keely wrote: "I finished it yesterday! What a relief. I won't say too much about it, only that I was pretty pleased with the ending even though it was dragged out a bit like the rest of the book."

well done!
I'm on hold due to tower teams :o

[Eldarwen]

Congrats! :-)

[Judy]

Congrats!!!

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

As you may know, the "Weighty Tome" came out of the cleaning out the closet challenge last year.

Recently we have been discussing the 2020 Weighty Tome and have a tie between War & peace and Gone with the wind. If you would like to join the read for either of these in 2020, please vote here. Unlike our usual polls, this one is not anonymous and it not featured on the homepage. So please only vote if you intend to join in. Thanks :)

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

I finished!! Woohoo!!

The development of the characters, the ups and downs, tension, and "coincidences" all make for a wonderful story.
I could have done without some of the tangents (like the history of paris sewers), but phew! I am so glad to have read this. Thank you everyone for helping me to get there this year!

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Keely wrote: "I finished it yesterday! What a relief. I won't say too much about it, only that I was pretty pleased with the ending even though it was dragged out a bit like the rest of the book."

I liked the ending too, but yes it could have been wrapped up with a little less misunderstandings ;)

[Sophie, The other one]

Yay!! Well done Karen!

Good luck to everyone else who is trying to get it done now TT is over

[Judy]

Congrats, Karen!!! Way to go :)

[Cat]

Yay Karen! and you have half of December still to go, you overachiever! :)

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Cat wrote: "Yay Karen! and you have half of December still to go, you overachiever! :)"

haha, I know!! I didn't realise that I only had about 3 hours left (according to my kindle) when TT began. So a few train trips this week was all it took!

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Thanks, Sophie and Judy!

[Eldarwen]

Woohh!! Congrats!!

I'll try to sneak in a chapter or two over the rest of this week and then I'm going to fully dive in next week and try to finish up the monster!

[Eldarwen]

From the looks of it, I'm going to be carrying Les Mis over into next year haha.

There just isn't enough time this year anymore!!

But we'll see... it isn't quite over yet ;-)

[Eldarwen]

This is definitely not going to happen this year anymore... :-(

My reading time has jumped out the window this year and I'm not even sure I can manage my goal of books for the year. I may have to sneak in a few short stories or reduce the number of books before the year is up.


I'll carry Les Mis over into next year and will try to finish it in January. (So I don't immediately fall hundreds of pages behind on War and Peace haha.)

[Eldarwen]

I'm still somewhere in Marius... where I was in September....

But I WILL finish this mammoth this year. Maybe even in January...(before Uno starts and I have to put this aside again for 3 months hehe).

[Victoria]

I'm umm... somewhere in Cosette....

I completely fell off the book when it went on and on talking about Waterloo at the start of this section. But I'm finally pass that point and enjoying it once more.

Will do my best to finish this and War & Peace this year!

[Victoria]

And congrats to everyone who finished in 2019!

[Wishbear]

I finished Dec 7 but forgot to post. I'm so glad to finally have this one done. I've read Jean Val Jean several times when I was younger and I'm glad to have all the extra that that little novella cut out. But I think, if I reread anything, it will be the little book rather than this massive tomb.

Good luck to those going on to War and Peace.

[Eldarwen]

Oh heavens, I just read through the fourth book in the Marius volume and it is soooo boring. Well, alright, I listened to it but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to retain any of it. So so much block text in this! Whenever one of those intellectuals was talking there were no breaks on the pages. None. It was block text from top to bottom, for pages on end. Terrible.

It almost felt like reading Dickens :-p

[Karen ⊰✿, Fiction Aficionado]

Eldarwen wrote: "It almost felt like reading Dickens :-p ..."

LOL

[Victoria]

Eldarwen wrote: "Oh heavens, I just read through the fourth book in the Marius volume and it is soooo boring. Well, alright, I listened to it but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to retain any of it. So so much b..."

lol I think that's about where I am right now. Things have been a lot easier since I switched to the audio book. I can let my mind wander while it drones on and on with useless info and tune back in when the actual story picks up.

I think the book is really making me appreciate the musical even more. It's a great story that (in my opinion) is hidden amongst unnecessary filler and the musical just presents you with the amazing bits.

[Victoria]

I FINISHED!!!!

It only too me 17 months and a lockdown, but I FINALLY DID IT!!!

I feel as though I deserve a reward lol

Overall, I loved the story (not surprising given my love for the musical), but I struggled a lot for the endless, pointless ramblings of unimportant things - like the history of Paris sewers.

Those long tangents nearly made me quit and part of why it took me so long to finish. I just kept getting bored and setting it down and dreaded to pick it up to continue those sections.

But I'm really glad I persevered as did like it overall and thankful for this buddy read that finally motivated me to do so (even though I didn't participate in the discussion and am nearly half a year late...)

Now on to War and Peace! (maybe...)

[Eldarwen]

Wooohh!! Congrats!!! :-D

I should really follow your example and get back to this doorstop and finally finish it as well! (And then move on to War and Peace, which I haven't yet started either.. oops... haha)

[Sophie, The other one]

Woo! Well done Victoria! Audio is such a lifesaver with some of these. Think it's the only reason I'm managing War and Peace.

Really need to find time to watch the musical sometime soon.

[Sammy]

Congrats! Yes, audio was a life-saver for me too when things got a bit too drawn out.

I'm finding it less useful for Russian classics though, as I find myself even more easily confused by the "5 different names and three titles for each person" thing that the Russians seem to be so fond of. With a print copy I at least could spend some time figuring out who was who. With audio I get hopelessly lost! lol.

I'm not kidding... I finished Les Mis in about 3 weeks, and War & Peace took about 6 months. I swear the difference was almost entirely down to trying to keep the characters straight! lol.