RSS

Tag Archives: Les Miserables

It’s Monday – What Are You Reading? (26 Dec)

its-monday-what-are-you-reading

It’s Monday – What are you reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date.

I’ve been really horrible about blogging over the last few months – I realize it, do a few posts to get “up to date” and then promptly lapse back into oblivion. Its part of the reason why I’ve been carefully pondering my word for 2017 (as part of Sheila @ Book Journey’s Word of the Year). so I do know that one of my goals for 2017 is to be a more consistent blogger – both with these weekly status updates, but also getting reviews posted in a more timely manner. But onto my current reading shenanigans…

I spent the last couple of days deep in a binge read of Catherine Bybee’s Not Quite series – thanks to Kindle Unlimited, I was able to read all of these as part of my monthly subscription. They are like candy to me – I keep reading them and don’t want to stop – very similar to my candy eating approach. Now I’m kind of up in the air on what series I’m going to read next…so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

lesmisOn a audiobook front, I’m alternating between three different books to include my third attempt at Les Miserables – I swear one of these days I am going to finish this book! I’m alternating my listening of Les Miserables, with The Poisoner’s Handbook – which is all about the development of forensic chemistry in the 1920’s and different ways that poison’s that killed people (either through murder or incidental causes) were identified and how it influenced the overall body of medical examinations and death investigations. And while at work, I’m listening to the next book in JD Robb’s In Death series – Promises in Death – i’m only a couple of hours into it, but I’ve seriously teared up a few times.

playing-the-partOn my kindle – i’m working my way through my normal wide variety of books – I’m on a pretty solid contemporary romance kick right now. I’ve had both Sea Glass Sunrise (Donna Kauffman) and Half Moon Hill (Toni Blake) chosen for me as part of a reading challenge based on the board game, Monopoly. I also started Playing the Part (Robin Covington) this afternoon as a quick read – double bonus since Robin is a local author for me to read.

In other news, I’m still trying to figure out what my first book of 2017 will be so that I can get that blog post prepped and i’m making plans for Bout of Books 18 which will be held in the first week in January.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy Holidays

 
4 Comments

Posted by on December 27, 2016 in It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Les Miserables – Take 2

les misA few years ago (geez, has it really been that long), I attempted to read Les Miserables (written by Victor Hugo). It has been on my goal list of books to read, since I fell in love with the musical nearly 15 years ago. But like many of my reading goals, I fizzled out on it about halfway through (which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone who knows me).

Fast forward to December 2015 and when I was putting together a list of challenge books to tackle in 2016, I decided to put Les Mis back on the list to try again. And to make it even better, in an audiobook group that I am part of, we started talking about bucket list books and several people mentioned Les Mis. Before long, the idea had been thrown out to do a buddy listen over the next few months.

There are a wide variety of translations of Les Miserable available. In my inital foray, I went with Norman Denny’s translation from 1976. According to this article on Hubpage, is supposed to be one of the translations that does a pretty good job of keeping Hugo’s original language, but making it more readable in Modern English. However, when I was looking at available audiobooks, the Denny version wasn’t available (or at least, not that I could see) – so based on the narrator (George Guidall, who I like), I ended up going with the Julie Rose translation. The Rose translation is one of the newer ones available (having been done in 2008) and supposedly one where she takes some liberty with the translation, adding some quips here and there. This translation has been seen as possibly ruining Hugo’s voice – so it will be interesting to see how it flows in audio.

Anyone else interested in joining me for a Les Mis read or listen? i’m planning on kicking it off on February 1st (on my commute either to or from work) and going to ration it, so make sure that I have time to enjoy it as well as process it.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on February 28, 2016 in Buddy Listen

 

Tags: , ,

Mini-Review – Les Miserables – Volume I (Fantine)

Thanks to Tien of Tien’s Blurb for hosting the above read-along.

So originally this post was supposed to go up over a week ago and I could have sworn that I finished it and hit post – but apparently not. I blame it on…umm, my ability to be a complete and utter scatterbrain at times…anyways, here we go. This review is my thoughts on the volume I of Les Miserables (Fantine), along with some discussion questions posed by Tien. This review has the potential to be completely and utterly SPOILERIFIC!! so you have been warned 😉

General Thoughts on Volume I
I have to admit that when I started reading, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the translation (by Denny) flowed. I was very easily sucked in and reaching my page goal each night (about 15-20 pages) was easy to do. I even found myself reading just a little bit more (which is always a bad idea when you had to be up at 4am for work)…I do have to admit that if I hadn’t had no only Tien, but other friends reading this, I might have gotten distracted but having that buddy support system for reading is great.

My other main thought so far is that I was surprised how well the first part of the musical mirrored what had happened in the book up until the end of the volume. And yes, I was singing various songs from the musical as I was reading.

Discussion Questions
1.What do you think of Bishop Myriel? He’s definitely described as being truly saintly; I’m wondering if there’s any pessimistic reader out there?
I have to admit that the beginning I was that pessimistic reader – I couldn’t believe that anyone was as perfect, as truely righteous and saintly as Bishop Myriel. But as his story progressed, he started to grow on me and Hugo’s writing style was persuasive in such a way that by the time Valjean’s path crossed with Myriel’s, I was convinced that he was that true saint. The kind of permission that you would expect have been made a Saint in the Catholic church 100 years or so post book setting.

2. For those of you who are reading this for the first time, was there any assumptions you have made previously from whatever source which was just incorrect? Was there anything which surprises you from the past week’s readings?
As I alluded to above, I’m a huge fan of the musical, although I have never seen it live (and yes, I’m still mad at my mom for not taking me to see it because I was too young…) I was pleasantly surprised with how well the musical mirrors (albeit reduced in time and descriptive). Personally, I can’t wait to see the new movie to see how well it has been adapted from the book.

3. What do you think of the contrast between Javert & Valjean?
The dichotomy between Javert and Valjean is intriguing, although I don’t think we have necessarily seen all there is to see yet since overall there was fairly limited interaction between the two. I have to wonder, whether in part, Javert’s pursuit of Valjean is in part jealously of his success – you have Javert who was born in a jail to a convict and made a life for himself that was moderately successful as a police inspector, but comparatively, then you have ValJean, a convict who served nearly 20 years, who is released, doesn’t finish his parole, and turns into a huge success – a rich business owner in a time, when many were struggling to just survive.

4. What has been the high point for you this week? Any quote/s which bowled you over this week?
As I was reading through this section and found a particularly interesting quote, I was bookmarking the page – unfortunately, I forgot to go back and highlight several of them…whoops.
But looking at the pages that I marked, there were several that I thought were significant:

“I mean that the man is ruled by a tyrant whose name is Ignorance, and that is the tyrant I sought to overthrow. That is the tyrant which gave birth to monarchy, and monarchy is authority based on falsehood, whereas knowledge is based on truth. Man should be ruled by knowledge.” – conversation between the Bishop and the old man (pg 52)

“There are men who dig for gold; he dug for compassion. Poverty was his goldmine; and the universality of suffering a reason for the universality of charity.” (pg 69)

“Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man” – this quote epitomizes the book – the choices that we as individuals must make, how many of them are based on promises made to other people. How you choose to live your life is affected by those promises

 
2 Comments

Posted by on October 9, 2012 in Book Review, Read-Along

 

Tags: , , ,

Read-Along – Les Miserables

Thanks to Tien of Tien’s Blurb for hosting the above read-along.

I have to admit that I love the musical of Les Miserables, but I have never actually read the book. So with the upcoming new movie that is being released in December, I am excited to join in this read-along.

If anyone is interested in joining us, you can click on the Les Miserables image above and it will take you to the hosting blog. The schedule for the read-along is as follows:

15 Sept – 28 Sept: Fantine
29 Sept – 12 Oct: Cosette
13 Oct – 26 Oct: Marius
27 Oct – 9 Nov: Saint Denis
10 Nov – 23 Nov: Jean Valjean
1 Dec: Final Review

Tien will be using the Signet Classics version of the book available through Amazon Les Misérables (Signet Classics). I am still looking for a good kindle version to read – so ideas are welcome and I will post my version choice when I figure it out.

I look forward to chatting with people about it.

 
6 Comments

Posted by on August 30, 2012 in Read-Along

 

Tags: , , , ,