[ SECRET POST #2189 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2189 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 084 secrets from Secret Submission Post #313.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I have got to try reading this book again. I read the first 800 pages fifteen years ago right before Christmas break when I was an undergrad, and then when I got back to school a month later, I realized I would have to re-read the first 800 pages again so I could finish the last 800. which I did not do. *hangs head in shame*

And somehow, as much as I love musicals (mostly the ones that have been made into popular film versions), I missed ever seeing the musical. I think I really want to see this film. :)

[(Anonymous)]

HEY HERE's 100 PAGES ON THE LAYOUT AND HISTORY OF THE PARIS SEWER SYSTEM

THAT'S WHAT YOU WANTED, RIGHT

[lunabee34]

Yeah. LOL I gotta admit that at 18, I was So Totally Not Interested in just how, ah, complex the book is.

But now as I have aged and finding the bathroom is generally my first step in any new activity, perhaps I will enjoy a treatise on the Paris sewage system? or I will skim lots and lots and lots LOL

[thene]

It's been my favourite book for about the last 15 years, and it was several readthroughs before I ever read all of the text.

If I'm foisting it on someone new, then a) I find them a translation that is lyrically beautiful and preserves all the batshit overloaded thirteen-adjective sentences, and b) I tell them to skip the Bishop, start at The Night Of A Day's Tramp, skip all but the last two pages of Waterloo, skip anything else that doesn't grab you, just read wherever the words grab your brain. The first time I read it, I think I started on about page 200 (someone had told me to read the scene with Eponine and Azelma playing with the cat and I didn't put it down). That book does not lend itself to linear.

[lunabee34]

Thanks for the heads-up. It helps to know that skimming certain parts is a recommended strategy from a Les Mis lover. :)

[(Anonymous)]

NA - thanks for this! I've tried to read the book several times in the last 20 years and could just never get into it. I'm a very literal person who has to be told things like "Don't read every single word starting on page 1 all the way through to the end". I'm also incapable of distinguishing the important things from the unimportant until I've finished reading something, so skimming doesn't work for me unless someone tells me what to skim over.

[(Anonymous)]

I love the book, but I also make a habit of recommending to people that they read the abridged version. I was lucky when I read it because my mom warned me that the beginning was going to be slow, but that it got really, really good once you got into it, so I stuck with it.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

That makes a lot of sense.

The copy I have is not abridged, so I'll start with it but not feel guilt if want to switch to an abridged version. :)

Never has this icon been more appropriate

[tenlittlebullets]

Abridged versions kind of suck though, because they don't just cut out the giant digressions that have nothing to do with the plot, they also trim interesting (and sometimes essential) development of secondary characters, bizarre and entertaining detours, Hugo's batshit verbose walls of text that have nothing to do with the action until suddenly they do, and basically all the fun stuff. Stripping that book down to the plot is almost dishonest, because it's one of those books where the destination--the plot--is mostly a pretext for the journey.

So I tend to tell people "DON'T GET AN ABRIDGED VERSION but feel free to skim, and also here are the chapter titles for the digressions you can skip." (Basically, the first fifty pages on the bishop, all but the very end of Waterloo, the @#$%&! convent digression, the bit on slang that's super awkward in translation, most of the stuff on the barricades of 1848, and the guided tour of the Paris sewer system. Even though I'm perversely fond of the guided tour of the Paris sewer system.)

Re: Never has this icon been more appropriate

[thene]

I totally love the sewer guide and the barricades of 1848, and on the second or third time through I eventually got some enjoyment out of both the convent and the Bishop (the latter, partly because I've visited the area where it's set a few times andd the placenames are pure poetry to me). Conversely, I hate Patron-Minette and never reread it.

[wauwy]

I found reading the book was really easy once I kept it in the bathroom, because most of the chapters are like two pages max. Whatever works, you know what I'm saying?

[lunabee34]

Ahahahahhaahahhaa.

I went and put the book in the bathroom right before I read this comment. Great minds, yes?

[(Anonymous)]

CHOS PIPE DO YOU HAVE A TUMBLR I WANNA FOLLOW YOU

[wauwy]

I donut, for I am eternally in the 2003 Internet.