Re-Reading Les Misérables

Thoughts and commentary on Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.

Catching Up

One of the drawbacks of reading on the Kindle is that it’s harder to get that at-a-glance feedback on your progress in a book. On the other hand, a tablet’s a lot easier to carry around while traveling than The Brick (especially now that they don’t make you turn it off for takeoff anymore).

It turns out that with all the traveling this week, I read 160 pages of Les Misérables, from the point where Marius walks into the area of Paris that’s in revolt, to the point where he’s carried out (pages 943-1103). I have fewer than 100 pages left, putting me on track to finish this month! It also puts me about 260 pages ahead of my commentary, though I managed to write another installment today:

This time through, I finally read the chapter on thieves’ argot, which the translator had pulled out of the main flow of the book into an appendix because it was a serious digression even by Victor Hugo’s standards.