Have you already seen Les Miserables*? If you haven’t, you must. Brave the crowds (because there will be crowds) and get in that theatre to watch the masterpiece. You will get choked up, you will get caught up in the Revolutionary spirit and you will have the songs stuck in your head for days. You may even download the soundtrack.
You already downloaded the soundtrack? Me too. Months ago, in preparation. I was one of those jerks singing along (silently). It was glorious. I did it again on the bus this morning. Which looked a lot more crazy.
Now. Have you read the book?
Me either!
Are you properly ashamed of yourself? I am. I tend to make it a point of honour to read a book before I see its movie version. For a couple of reasons. First, obviously, so I can be one of those people that’s all “Have you read the book? It’s better.” Secondly, because I want to know what’s going to happen and finally so that I can be in the know about the things that the movie leaves out. Like that part in the last Harry Potter movie where the Harry Potter says to the dead Lupin something about his son and my boyfriend was all “wait, what? He has a son?” because that was never touched on in the movie beforehand.
But Les Miserables is a horse of a different colour. I never really got the urge to read it because it’s massive and I assumed (wrongly) that it would be difficult to get through. I was thinking Tolstoy when I maybe should have been thinking more along the lines of Dumas (Tolstoy is all wordy and broody and detailed, Dumas is funny and strangely relatable considering how old his works are).
My bad.
Then there was the timing of the whole thing. Reading Les Miserables is obviously a commitment and it deserves to be given due consideration. I wanted to see the movie basically the day it opened (I managed it on Boxing Day instead) and I also wanted to hit my revised target of 80 books read this year…
A choice was made and it did not involve reading Les Miserables. I’m working on it now. Mostly because I’m obsessed with the whole thing and I want more. So far it’s not a bad read. But I’m not sure that I will be able to dedicate myself to it fully until I’ve gotten my book store shopping spree out of my system…
A reading failure all around.
*Apologies to the French language purists, but I cannot for the life of me get the correct accent on the first ‘e’.
The Paperback Princess 