Monday, March 07, 2011

Not Hearing the People Sing...

It's funny to think that by this time last year, I had already read 16 books. This year, I have read four.

Still, that's not actually a problem. The reason for the relatively slow progress is that most of my reading so far this year has been in "Les Miserables", which has been extremely slow going. Last week, I finally finished up Part One (of five). I'm particularly enjoying the singing. Oh, and the bits that the editors decided not to translate from the French. (There was also a great pun that they did translate, but which was only funny in the French. Ho ho!)

The other reading I've been doing has all been game related. I've been slowly reading through the AD&D 1st Edition hardbacks (which have actually been fascinating - it seems I've been doing it wrong for years), and the most recent Pathfinder books.

The sort-of-but-not-quite goal for March is to finish the first volume of "Les Miserables", read through the "Dungeon Master's Guide", and read the latest Pathfinder, thus getting caught up on that front. Which will give me a grand total of seven books.

#3: "Pathfinder: Vaults of Madness", by Greg A. Vaughan
#4: "Pathfinder: The Thousand Fangs Below", by Graeme Davis

2 comments:

Kezzie said...

Wow! welldone on Les miserables. The title says it all for me! Never thought of reading it before. Do you recommend or think I should use a bargepole to create distance between myself and it?

I've read a pretty trashy array of books so far I am quite sure! I think as soon as I try to read anything more complicated, I may just fall behind in the 'not-really-setting-myself-a-target-but still-keeping-track stakes

Steph/ven said...

Eh, hard to say.

The book opens with a long and tedious digression. No, really. After that, Jean Valjean finally arrives on the scene, and things pick up a lot.

But I'm still not sure there's really enough to recommend the book if you're familiar with the musical. Several things implied in the musical are detailed in the book ("He slept a summer by my side", or the original meeting between Fantine and the Thenardiers), but it really doesn't add too much.

However, there are some key differences. Fantine's degradation is much more harrowing in the book. And the Thenardiers are much more malevolent and much less comic-relief than in the musical.

I'll stick it out, and may well have a more solid opinion once it's done, but for the moment I can't really recommend it - it's a lot of work for not too much gain.