Les Miserables

I set a goal almost two years ago to read Les Mis, the unabridged version.  I started the book with my usual excitement.  Certainly a book with so much hype, and such a beautiful story, had to be the best book ever written right?  Well promise me you won't hate me, but it was perhaps one of the most difficult books I have ever tried to get through, and I only finished it finally this year because I had set the goal and I was determined, if not slow, to accomplish it.

I am not sorry I read it.  The overall story is beautiful and amazing.  There are so many good take aways, and parts of the book are fascinating and compelling.  I loved the character development, and I loved knowing the "rest of the story"  that is skipped over and changed in the movie and play.  Marius and Cosette is a beautiful and believable story in the book, Javert makes so much more sense, and you understand so much better how low Jean Val Jean was before being changed by the kindness of the Bishop. I felt like the ending in the book is much more satisfactory than how the play ends as well.

That is what I liked, what I didn't like is that Victor Hugo must love to hear himself talk or something.  No one, or at least I didn't,  wants to know or read his harangue about the sewers of France and the positive uses of human fertilization, or the lengthy discussion on dialects, or countless other things.  I appreciate and even like some historical background that makes the story make sense and enables me to understand it's context, but I don't need page after page of philosophical opinion making.

So what is my overall take-I am glad I read it.  Will I read it again? No.

Alexis with the Liahona :)

 In other news...This amazing and beautiful sister missionary will be home in exactly 4 weeks!
4 WEEKS! Can't wait!