Tag: reading

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As my series on re-reading Les Misérables grew, I realized it needed its own space. The pages that once held my long-defunct fan site, hyperborea.org/les-mis, seemed appropriate. I’ve moved the whole series there, along with the reviews of the show and movie, and some of my meta-commentary. With any luck it should be easier to find and navigate now.

It’s been slow going, but I’m determined to finish the book — I got through the end of Part Four (of five) last night, almost 1000 pages — and the commentary by the end of the year.

Read on for the commentary as Gavroche rescues his brothers* and his father in the same night…but no one recognizes him, and even he doesn’t even know the younger boys are his brothers.

*Yes, brothers. I thought I’d remembered all the Thenardier children, but it turns out there are five in all.

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I had a long list of books I wanted to read this year, and now that it’s November, I’ve become acutely aware that I’ve only read a few of them.

I can’t feel too bad about it, though, because one of those books I’ve been reading is Les Misérables, complete and unabridged…all 1200+ pages of it…and I’m writing commentary on it. Even when I first read it as a high school student, back in 1992, it took me several months.

It is taking me a lot longer to read this time around. I started it back in January, and I’m about three-quarters of the way through now. At first I thought it was just a matter of time.

At first I thought it was a matter of reading time. Between having a family, a full-time job, time-consuming hobbies and of course the constant temptation to look at Facebook or Twitter or Feedly or something else, I’m down to reading during my weekday lunch hours and that’s about it.

On the other hand, back in high school, I was a student. I had homework, extracurricular activities, and lots of reading for school.

I don’t think the commentary slows down the process too much (except that it does take up time on the weekends when I could be reading), but the fact is…

I actually have made a sizable dent in that reading list. And some of those books have been immense themselves: A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time conclusion by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson), A Turn of Light (Julie Czerneda), The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi, not terribly long, but incredibly dense), plus new books by Robert J Sawyer and Seanan Maguire, a bunch of non-fiction…

Looked at that way, I don’t feel quite so bad, either for not having Les Misérables finished or for not having finished all the other books I wanted to read.

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Bad idea of the day: “I’ll be back before the rain starts again. No need to bring my umbrella.”

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I actually would have made it if I hadn’t decided to finish re-reading The Briar King. Three pages from the end — WHOOSH! Instant cloudburst!

So I finished the book, zipped the full-sized hardcover into my jacket, and proceeded to run from Coffee Bean to the parking structure, pausing under overhangs when I found them. There’s a surprising lack of shelter at the Irvine Spectrum, not counting the stores themselves. It wasn’t until I got to the structure that I realized I’d been running with a coffee cup in my hand.

Amazingly enough, even though I got soaked, I managed to keep the book dry!

(Reposted from LiveJournal.)