I never found that I was having any trouble following subsequent chapters after skipping sections, so it seemed to work out. In a way, it’s actually a compliment to the rest of the book–I was far too eager to get back to Jean Valjean and the rest, and couldn’t stomach the amount of reading time it would take to wade through the other bits. You see, Hugo has this habit of going off into history or social commentary for twenty pages at a stretch. I’m guesstimating I read a solid 750 pages. That was fun, but more importantly, knowing the musical meant I had a pretty good idea where Hugo was going–which is not always obvious!īefore I go further, I should confess something. Knowing the soundtrack so well, I frequently had relevant lines running about in my mind as I read the corresponding scene. The musical felt (to me) like it was predominantly accurate to the book–not in every particular, but in most ways. I’ve seen the musical, both as a play and the recent movie, and I think that was beneficial reading the original. My copy had 920 pages of very small font, and with that much text to get through, it’s a good thing I enjoyed the story so much! I have a fear of long books, a fear I have been attempting to confront this year by reading some of the big thick books I’ve put off (usually because there are so many other books to read!) I’m trying to get in one a month, and in February I tackled what’s probably the thickest of them all, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
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