Victor Hugo - Les Misérables

Who here has approached its massiveness?

I can tell you this much: it's inconvenient to carry around.

I have read it! But in Wordsworth Classics form, so two volumes = slightly less unwieldly to carry around.

Loved all the pompous philosophical digressions, and Jean Valjean stumbling through the sewers. I remember the impact of some scenes being lessened by my brain's insistence to picture every street urchin as Pip from South Park.

Tried to read it at thirteen (musical fan) (oh god); failed.

You know, the musical isn't bad.

i think this is the one i used to listen to to pump myself up:

there might have been, like, a more military one, though? i'm scared to spend more than five minutes looking.

Recently updated:

I can't see whatever's supposed to be there, but the more military one is maybe "Look Down"?

i'm about to spend 100 hours on a bus, think i can get through a big enough chunk of the book for it to be worth my while? any words of encouragement/discouragement?

just let it flow dude

okay there are way too many pompous philosophical digressions in this novel. the story and characters are awesome but i got bored of the narrator after a few hundred pages.

I love the pompous philosophical digressions! They're prettty quaint now, but they hit home how the role of the writer in society back then was so different.

agh i just found he squeezed every idea so dry, as if he was trying to get you to revel in the awesome wisdom of his words. i'm not saying it didn't work, but it's a chore reading something so passionately written.

UK archivist says uncovers real-life Quasimodo

Shame Julia Rose couldn't convince Vintage to let her translate the title as "Poor Bastards", heh.

Really good artist and he never made his work public
https://benedante.blogspot.com/2016/06/victor-hugos-drawings.html

Those are cool!

yeah, they are. thanks for sharing that, i had no idea. i like this one:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WAp3DZoQnIY/V25_prlcETI/AAAAAAAA7ko/xNLF2PYVuGcXG1A--kO-or16OXgQj9kTwCLcB/s1600/Le_phare-_par_Victor_Hugo.jpg

> Shame Julia Rose couldn't convince Vintage to let her translate the title as "Poor Bastards", heh.

Am reading the new penguin classics translation where they have translated the title - The Wretched - which has probably confused a lot of people. (Cover does use the French name in small underneath tbf). (It's £2 as an ebook on Amazon, but has 64 pages of TOC due to the way the footnotes are done, crazy. Free on Project Gutenberg in a much older translation, of course)

Just started volume 2, Cosette. Was Hugo paid by the word?

Also, people seem annoyed at the modern language in the Rose version, greasy spoon etc.

New woodcut cover is nice too, with the red. Kindle version not so good as the red and black are too similar when converted to get. I had to tweak mine a bit (split it into volumes as well, and fixed the toc, using calibre, because that 1840 page count scared me a bit)

19 chapters of the Battle of Waterloo and a couple of paragraphs on the end to explain a hotel sign mentioned in passing 300 pages earlier...

finished this.

can't help but wonder what happened to the two youngest kids, the ones that spent a night in the elephant and were last seen stealing bread from a swan.

Since then I've read Toilers of the Sea, which was a page turner, the stranded ship bit.

And I've just finished The Man Who Laughs which could've been a novella rather than 600 pages. Based, at the beginning, in places we holidayed as kids, Portland Bill etc, so that was good.