#except his plot waslesscoherent

pilferingapples:

faeriesofarcadia:

windandwater:

so. some notes.

• all of tumblr is reading dracula, but I am not doing that, because I am reading les mis
• I started doing that in 2020 but abruptly had to stop because, uh…you know.
• my ability to read anything got rather catastrophically shut down, plus, in case you weren’t aware, les mis is astonishingly relevant to things going on right now and it was way too much
• I can read again! I am back in full monstrous force! I read way too fast actually! I just read 4 books in 4 days (again) and the only thing that can save me from myself is classics!
• I have not seen this musical don’t come for me
• so, back to this…this book.

and you know I like to liveblog The Experience and in case y’all didn’t know, “rambling about the Parisian sewers for no reason” is exactly the kind of wacky nonsense I very much enjoy in classic literature, so, here we go.

things victor hugo has taken time out of his narrative to make sure I know:

1. jean valjean is jacked
2. literally everything possible there is to say about this one really dope bishop
3. everything victor hugo remembers about the year 1817, which somehow no one on the internet has annotated in detail (footnotes are your friend but wow did I stop caring after a minute)
4. that one guy who wrote a report about Parisians being lazy/harmless is a dumbass and here’s why. they’ll kick your ass. now back to the story.
5. seriously this quote (after a very long digression from the plot) made me laugh so hard (may vary in other translations): “Having scribbled this note in the margins of the Anglés report, we can now get back to our four couples.” you cannot tell me this man didn’t know what he was doing.
6. fuck the police

Why on earth are there no notes on what happened in 1817? Are cliff noyes still around? The last time I saw them was back in the 80s? 90s? In b daltons

There are footnotes in both the Donougher and the Rose translations!  Including for The Year 1817!  Both are complete translations and honestly worth getting for the footnotes alone, even if you already have a copy of the book. 

so a slight clarification just to understand how off the deep end I originally went back in 2020 when I wrote the first draft of this post: back then I obtained three separate translations of this book (all ebooks) because I wanted the Rose translation and originally couldn’t get it but then did but by then I was already reading the Signet version b/c I heard it wasn’t too bad and then at one point I was comparing the versions trying to decide which one to stick with?

I didn’t get into all this for the sake of comedy but then yanno y'all found my post that I expected 5 people to read. Long story short I dropped all that this year, am sticking to the Rose version and now have footnotes, but I’m still confused, Victor!!!! your “we didn’t start the fire” chapter is still off the rails my dude!! let’s go back to the ACAB shit I like that!!!