A Fan's Playground

RIGHT MY THOUGHTS ON VOLUME FOUR, I WAS GOING TO DO THOSE.

HAHAHAH like I remember any of my thoughts, it took me WAY TOO LONG to read this volume. I mean, I had thoughts! Lots of thoughts! And I kept on having them all the way through the volume! But now I am CAUGHT UP IN MY EMOTIONS FOR VOLUME FIVE and like CAN WE TALK ABOUT ( spoilers!!! )

ANYWAYS THIS HAS NOT BEEN MY PROPER POST OF THOUGHTS AND REACTIONS TO EITHER VOLUME IV OR V BUT I HAD THINGS I WANTED TO SAY. SO. HERE YOU GO. HOPEFULLY YOU WILL GET MORE AND BETTER THOUGHTS LATER.

So last night I finished Volume I of Les Miserables. Does this count as finishing a book? I mean it was long enough to be a book all on its own! And I'm pretty sure Les Mis was originally published serially one volume at a time! But otoh I'm pretty sure nobody thinks of it as five books. WHATEVER I WILL DO A POST ON VOL I NOW and at the end of the year when I am doing my final count I will decide whether Les Mis gets to count as one book or five.

So. SO FAR I LOVE IT. A LOT. VICTOR HUGO HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME.

Let me begin by saying that I have never been more sad that I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of, like, ALL OF HISTORY (but especially Classical Greece & Rome, and also all of French history) so that I could easily follow all of Hugo's ridiculously many allusions. ALSO I have never been more sad that I'm not fluent in 19th century French, because Victor Hugo? IS A FAN OF PUNS. And I'm sure I am missing a bunch due to the tragedy of having to read him in translation.

Anyways the important bits to talk about in Volume I I think, are the beginning section and the ending section. (and okay all the other sections too I GUESS, I JUST LOVE IT ALL.) But the opening, all about how Super Awesome Amazing Special the Bishop Myriel is (Monseigneur Bienvenu! SO GOOD!) is really awesome and endearing. I love the dude! Everything about him is the best!

And the ending sequence of events, the ones that roughly parallel the songs "Who Am I" and "Confrontation" in the musical, are absolutely riveting. Like. I am having trouble remembering the last time I had THAT MANY FEELS over a novel. It was so intense and amazing and wowwwww and several times I had to briefly set down my ereader because I was busy having so many feels I could not deal. Relatedly, JEAN VALJEAN CAN I PLEASE GIVE YOU A MILLION HUGS, YOU ARE EVERY BIT AS AWESOMESAUCE AS MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU, ILU.

And EVERYTHING ELSE, EVERYTHING ELSE WAS ALSO AMAZING, but the Who Am I - Confrontation sequence was THE MOST AMAZINGNEST, oh wow. Yeah, I think I'll just end here because I AM OUT OF WORDS.