158/1001- 'Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens or 'French Peasants Be Bloodthirsty Y'all!"

 So I, like, love Dickens. I totally fan girl for Dickens, I love Copperfield and Bleak House and all of it, I love the guy, he's the best (well not the best, but he's pretty damn good)

I've tried to read a Dickens a year for the past few years and I've honestly never really been disappointed. I mean sure some have been better than others, and some have dragged a little with no real memorable characters ( you know who you are Hard Times) but there have been no real duds. 

And then came 'Tale of Two Cities'. I'll be honest I wasn't really looking forward to this one from the start. I knew it was set earlier than the other Dickens I'd read, I knew it was about the French revolution and honestly that sounded a bit 'big' for the Charlie I knew. Other Dickens were more subtle in their commentary, there's like a consistent, low grade, 'poverty bad' vibe going through all his other work that is both true (poverty IS bad) and subtle. Bleak House is clearly telling us that the British legal system was pretty cuckoo for coco pops back then, but it didn't interfere with a solid story and interesting characters. But I feared that the French Revolution, with all its decapitating, and plundering, not to mention its Frenchness (I mean do you get more quintessentially British than Dickens?!?) was not really going to be in Charles' wheelhouse...

And yeah I was completely bloody right! 

The book has two speeds, deathly dull slow, and heads flying off fast. It starts with the minor intrigue of a French doctor getting locked up for a really long time in the Bastille, before being let out (for reasons that I still can't fathom and actually can't bring myself to care about) and finding his now grown up daughter. They live in England and life progresses at a snails pace, they have exactly 4 male friends and Dickens spends about 200 pages simply describing their friends, house, and deeply unremarkable and not very interesting lives. Sure I think Dickens thinks we're thinking through all of this 'ahh I'll keep my reading in state of suspense, dying to find out what it was that got the doctor locked up, I am the master of intrigue and I twirl my moustache in triumph' when really I'm just like...

So yeah after that total bore-fest, the daughter is married to a French dude, Charles, who's actually an aristocrat in hiding again for reasons that aren't really clear as the revolution hasn't started yet, other than, like, we meet his uncle once and he was a bit of a dick and then got murdered, which I thought was actually Charles which actually made me like the guy, except it turns out later I was wrong. So aristocrat in hiding, marries French doctors daughter in a courtship entirely unseen and unremarkable except we're just supposed to accept that they are, actually, totally madly in love. Then Charles gets a letter from some servant saying he's been locked up by mad peasants who think he's been treating them badly but he actually hasn't because Charles (as his master) told him to let them all of their debts, but it just seems the peasants forgot that. Charles is a total non-starter as a character, he has next to no dialogue for the whole book and just sort of makes bad decisions and loves his wife like a 2D cutout. He makes what has to be the worst decision ever and heads off to France without telling his family (who don't even know he's actually an aristocrat) to rescue this servant who's never appeared in this story yet despite it already being half way through but he's totally worth risking his life for. Shock! Horror! Charles is arrested and awaits a good beheading (which would arguably improve his IQ) within about 4 seconds of being in France. 

And to make matters worse, his wife, father in law, two servants, friend and small daughter all decide to move to France to help him, endangering their lives as well. Time slows down again, as everyone just sits around waiting for Charles to get beheaded and the doctor tries his level best to stop this happening. He almost manages it, but then it's revealed that the doctor, who is popular with the crazy, bloodthirsty revolutionaries, ended up in prison because some rich dudes kidnapped him, forced him to try and help a woman they raped to (eventual) death and killed all the family of, and then when he tried to tell the authorities about what they did they had him locked up. 

So many questions here, like if these rich dudes killed the family of the woman they raped, why wouldn't they just kill the doctor that was going to tell on them too? In fact why the hell would they bother getting a doctor for her anyway, because they don't seem to want her to live and potentially tell the world of their vileness? Who eventually lets the doctor go too? Like he lives by himself in some dungeon, locked up without trial by immoral rich rapists to keep him quiet, who gets round to freeing him? But perhaps the most ridiculous bit of this is that, upon finding out this story about the doctor, instead of giving him a pat on the back and saying 'well sounds like you suffered at the hands of the aristocracy too matey boy, and good work on comforting and trying to save the poor peasant rape victim and endangering your live to try and reveal the truth, you truly are one of us and your head is safe where it it', they're like 'nar, we're going to kill your son in law and then come after you!'. 

I know right! OK so it seems Charles is the son of one of the rapey brothers, but it also reveals he was like 2 when his daddy did all this, and his mother was totally mortified and tried to send money to the rape victims family (but her husband killed them all so that was a none starter) but they still think he should die cause his dad was a bad un. 

Daddy doctor, and as it turns out genuinely sound guy, has to flee with his daughter and granddaughter cause the murderous peasants want to kill them all, and yes the daughter and little girl too, for no good reason, because it seems the peasants are just plain EVIL. Charles is left to get beheaded, which really is a bit unfair but I dunno, who cares the guy never says or does anything. Then, for reasons that just don't exist, a friend of theirs who was once described as looking like Charles, bribes his way into the prison and swaps places with him and gets beheaded instead. Everyone lives happily ever after unperturbed by their friend getting beheaded, and Charles goes back to his personality-less manikin existence in London. A super satisfactory ending. 

I know right Mal, it makes not a fucking jot of sense. The whole thing is bizarre, confusing, and unrealistic. Dickens makes no allowances for being in Paris for half the book other than saying they are there, language barriers are barely mentioned, nor are any Parisian landmarks other than the jail. The French people are all, without exception, murderous madmen who dance crazy dances, get pissed, and chop off heads. I admit I know nothing about the French Revolution, but I'm inclined to believe this portrayal to easily border on xenophobic. Half the book is about saving Charles who is just a nothing character, and while it seems most people want to save him because they like his wife (which is a refreshing gender reversal) she is pretty vaguely just 'nice' to people. The whole thing walked a unsatisfactory zig zag between dull and weird, I have no idea why it is so well liked, other than maybe the inclusion of a bit of decapitation makes it a bit more gory than other Dickens books, where people mostly just die of a chill or being poor. Best selling novel of all time? Must have been a rubbish year for book releases... 

Oh and the servant Charles goes to France to heroically rescue? It's mentioned once that he got out of prison long before Charles even comes to trial, and is never spoken or heard of again. Charles achieves nothing positive, and lets his mate get beheaded for his stupidity. Cool. 

130/1001 'Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, or 'Man, Kids Be Violent In The Future'

So I could bore you with apologies about how I've not posted in like months and all. I could cry to you about how I have a new job and it has been stressful and all... or I could just post a book review. Yeah let's do that.

So Clockwork is one of those nice, thin books on the 1001 that can be read in an afternoon yet still counts for the same amount of reading as a girt long book like Les Mis (yeah I'm still not over it). It's set in the not to distant future (well not to distant from the early 1960's when it came out, it still having vinyl records and all it kinda felt dated to this 2013 reader) where teenagers run round raping and stealing all night and no one seems to give a god damn about it. Alex is our narrator, and him and his gang run round all night being vile and rapey and unpleasant to give us a taste of the future. They beat up old people, ruin some books (those bastards!), rob a shop, steal a car, invade a home, beat up a couple and then gang rape the wife.

Yeah it's all real unpleasant, I can see why people objected to this book, it's hella nasty, but what is creepy is how quickly you become desensitised to it all. After the first like 20 pages of mindless violence it just blends into one long, dull account, so that when Alex gets up the next day and heads off in to town to pick up a couple of 10 year old girls to get drunk and rape, it's just sort of old hat really. What is even more creepy is you start to actually like Alex, he may be a murderous, rapist thug but he's somehow loveable. And when his gang of 'droogs' (more on that language issue later) turn on him and he ends up getting arrested I was genuinly distressed for the poor young delinquent.

        see, he's sorry really!

So Alex gets carted off to prison, which he is very indignant about but really, given that he has just murdered an old lady on top of the previous acts of violence, rape and pedophilia, it all seems quite fair. He does a few years in prison then murders another inmate which is seen as the final straw. He is put forward for a new technique to 'cure' him and make him into a good person. As it means he'll get out of prison early he volunteers. He is then exposed to lots and lots of videos of vile, horrible things while being given medication to make him feel sick, the result being that any hint of violence makes him want to vom. 

This is where, for me, the book gets interesting. Alex leaves prison unable to do bad, but as a result gets victimised by the very victims he used to torment. He is unable to defend himself, and even though his victims know he has been reformed (it's in all the papers) they still want to beat the living crap out of him, and they do. The trouble is, as the governor of Alex's prison suggests, that there is no punishment, and people want to see a wrong doer being punished. Alex is eventually driven to commit suicide by a political group opposed to the government that has reformed him, but he fails and the conditioning is 'undone' so he has the option of being violent again. 

So, the ethics teacher in me asks, can you be good if you don't have the option of being bad? Well the problem seems to be that you never really see Alex as bad in the book. Sure he does some horrific things, but he doesn't seem to do them out of any real spite of viciousness, but just because he enjoys it and because he can. He is like an animal that can't help himself, he is charming and intelligent and he just likes to rape and kill. Other characters, such as Alex's friend Dim who betrays him to the police and then becomes a member of the police and viciously beats Alex, is far less likeable as his intention seems to be to hurt; Alex doesn't want to hurt he just wants to have fun. By contrast, the reformed Alex cannot do bad doesn't really seem to do any good either, he can't hit people, but he fails to do anything that is actually good in the time he is reformed. When he comes home to his parents who have taken in a lodger in him place, he still shouts and makes them feel guilty, he has no compassion for their situation, nor does he feel shamed that his parents have had to resort to getting a lodger to occupy his room. But this all upsets me because I feel like I want to say the book implys violence is OK, but it doesn't say that. It's complicated and makes my brain hurt. DAMN YOU BURGESS!

Phew, a picture of a cute hedgehog helped there! Right the language, yeah it took me like 10 mins to read the first page cause I was looking up every word in the glossary at the back and I was like 'damn this is going to get irritating, even if this book is only 120 pages long'. Then I stopped looking stuff up and it sort of got easier to understand, and by the end I was using words like 'horrorshow'  and 'malenky' in everyday conversation, much to the confusion of my significant other. So yeah the language is kinda cool, even though I thought it would be mega irritating and it was the principle reason why I never read this book sooner. Well played Burgess, well played.

The Film
Man, Kubrick is fucked up. I mean the book was kinda fucked up, but the film is like major fucked up. No wonder it got banned! Case in point, in the book Alex goes to prison for killing an old lady with lots of cats, in the flim Alex goes down for beating a much younger lady to death with a massive penis. Why Kubrick? Did you read the book and think 'this needs a girt penis in it because there simply isn't enough sex and violence'? Dude, if you weren't already dead I'd advise therapy, pronto.     

'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, or 'Racist Southern Women Care Too Much About Toilets', also 120/1001 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, or 'American Racism with a Hint of Magical Realism'

So I was all reading 'Invisible Man' cause it was on the 1001 and I hadn't heard of it and it's supposed to be a classic and I saw it in a charity shop and what not, and then my book group was all 'let's read this awesome book 'The Help' cause we heard other people say it's awesome' and I was all 'yeah alright'. So I stop reading 'Invisible Man' in order to read 'The Help' in time for my next book group meeting, and then they mention 'Invisible Man' in 'The Help' and they're both all about racial equality and I was all...

So 'The Help' is all about some nasty, posh, white southern ladies who, for the most part, treat their black maids like crap even though they do everything for them and raise their children. The head bitch in the pack is a woman called Hilly, who starts a campaign to stop black maids using the same toilets as their white employers to avoid innocent whites getting nasty black diseases. It would be hilarious if it wasn't taken so seriously by all the other posh, white southern ladies. One of head bitches mates realizes she is an utter tool decides to write a book full of interviews of these bitchy womens' maids. Two of these maids champion her cause, despite the fact that they know they risk their jobs, and potentially their lives, and the book gets written and published. Lots of people get pretty pissed off after it's published, at which point the bitches friend who compiled it all knobs off to New York. Yeah I wasn't happy with the ending. Oh and there was some hoo-har in the middle about a chocolate pie someone shat in.

 Opinion? Yeah it was very readable, except for the poo pie bit which was actually quite difficult to read! You have ALL the outrage at the nasty women, who ruin the lives of their maids without a second thought, you love the maids, who are funny and heartwarming and sweet. I have a few niggles, like how all the bitchy ladies are so goddamn young (like 23 most of them) yet they have ANCIENT mothers that must be put in old people homes and go senile and what not, yet surely they should be like 50 years old at max! Also there is a weird bit about a naked man attacking one of the maids and her employer that came from nowhere and didn't really lead to anything either. Overall though it was interesting, thought provoking and heartwarming. Awww.

Well not totally, similar themes, but generally it's a very different direction in which we now travel. So 'Invisible Man' is all SERIOUS and LITERARY and IMPORTANT and REALLY REALLY CONFUSING.
So the poor, black protagonist (he isn't given a name throughout the book, despite it all being from his perspective, cause he's invisible ya see! ya see?) works his way up to a respectable, all black, southern college. He has to go through a slightly bizarre 'to the death' boxing match in order to obtain his position, but hey, it's not explained so I guess it's just something I don't get, either because I'm British or I'm dumb. He then gets the task of driving round some posh old white dude who helped found the college or something and rather stupidly he takes him to this bloke who slept with his daughter and got her pregnant.

Yeah I know right? He then takes him to a fucked up bar and then wonders why he ends up getting thrown out, but thrown out he is and he takes off to New York. Lots of people don't give him jobs, mainly because, ya know, he is..... carrying a letter that says he was expelled from college!

oh yeah kids, I worked out how to put gifs on my blog!

He then goes into a spiral of depression and ends up working for what I think are a load of communists. Notice the 'I think' cause really have have NO FUCKING CLUE.
Anyway it all seems to go to crap (not really sure why) and he ends up living in a basement with hundreds of light bulbs working on stolen electricity in order to 'stick it to the (white) man'. I wish I had understood this book, I really do!   

119/1001 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin or 'Emma Bovary moves to New Orleans and Makes a Twat of Herself'

So a few months ago I happened to watch a film called 'The Awakening'. It was OK, kinda, it was about some scientific ghost hunter lady going to some creepy school in Scotland and having her parts equally scared and charmed off her by this teacher guy and his ghostly kids. It was sort of like Mythbusters meets 'The Others' with a bit of rape and lust thrown in for good measure. Now I was fairly keen on 'The Others' but was HORRENDOUSLY disappointed by the book it was based on, 'The Turn of the Screw'*. So when I typed 'The Awakening' into Amazon (to see if the DVD had been released) and a book came up I thought "hooray! Chance for a scary read". The when I saw that I could download it to my kindle FOR FREE and that IT WAS LISTED ON THE 1001 I was like ZOMFG! THIS IS MEANT TO BE LADS!

 
Yeah so it turns out that, upon further research, the ghosty film and the book by Ms. Chopin have nothing in common. My bad. Turns out that 'The Awakening' is an early feminist classic, who knew? Well not me evidently. But hey I thought, I like my feminist stuff, I'm up for this, I've never heard of the damn thing but it was evidently important once and after all it is still on the 1001 list.

So this version sees a young society wife and mother fall in love with a young dandy while on holiday. It all starts out as a bit of flirty fun, but then it gets a bit out of hand and the young lad buggers off to Mexico because he knows the whole thing is doomed. Meanwhile the young society wife (known here after as Edna) moves back to New Orleans and proceeds to get more and more fed up with all her society duties, so she decides to jack it all in. She stops doing her little visits and returning letters and holding dinner parties and all those super important things what ladies with rich fellas oughta do. Her husband is all 'WTF' but is convinced by the local doctor that she is just being a silly girl and that it is fine for him to bugger off to New York for a while and send his kids to his mothers because Edna won't do anything silly.

 So surprise surprise, while hubby is away Edna starts fooling around with a local womanizer and generally misbehaving, at least in the eyes of polite society. She shuts up the big fancy family pad and moves into a little house down the road, where lover boy can come round without the neighbors minding. The the guy she fancied on holiday comes back from Mexico, like kisses her once and then promptly runs off again. In response to this Edna travels back to where she met him on holiday and drowns herself.

Honestly I cannot figure this out, I'm just so confused. The silly bint kills herself? Alright her lover boy has buggered off again but really he's done it once before so I'm sure she'll come back. Also she's just managed to get what she wants, she's left her husband, she's carrying on with some Casanova, she has her own house with no kids to bother her, so why does she kill herself? And why did people get so upset about this book giving women 'ideas', it didn't exactly end well for her did it? 'Here you go ladies, leave your husbands, leave your kids and end up drowning yourselves in despair', surely it's more of a cautionary tale!

Up until the suicide bit ruined it all though, I was quite enjoying this book. Chopin communicates this kinda vague despair of women who haven't really been terribly ill treated, but still are a bit fed up with their lot in life quite well. Edna knows she should be happy really, she is well off, attractive, has plenty of servants to help her run her house and her husband is very kind and treats her well, but it doesn't make her happy. I think there is a clear tendency for people (men and women alike) to think that if you don't actually abuse women, and they have more or less the same rights as men, then that's just fine and we should put up with it. It's only when we completely fuck over women (like old Tess of the d'Urbervilles) that we need to get upset. I guess that puts Chopin well ahead of her time really, this general feeling of being dissatisfied with the role society wants you to play rings very true today, when in the west we are, on paper, so close to equality between the sexes, but in much more subtle ways we are so far from it.

Edna is a lot like Madame Bovary, the main difference being she isn't such a bitch. I guess what made this book different from others at the time (in the humble opinion of someone who originally thought it was about Scottish ghosts) is the fact that we are supposed to sympathise with her. Yeah I don't like that she feels the need to cheat on her husband with a lame playboy (why do the women in these kind of books always feel the need to be adulterous?) or that she kills herself (still super pissed off about that) but I do like her, and I do feel sorry for her. I don't feel sorry for Emma Bovary, the book was awesome, but she was an utter cunt.

* I know I know preferring the film to the book is a bibliophile no no, but this is one of the very rare cases where this is justified. 'The Turn of the Screw' is very, very, very boring for a book that is supposed to be about ghosts and creepy kiddies. It's all so vague and poorly described, I'm sure a shadow at a window was enough to make the Victorians soil their pantaloons, but it takes a bit more these days.  

118/1001 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey- or 'American Rebellion Books, You're Doing It Right!'

Written during my brief hiatus from 'The House of Book'. I wrote most of this as a draft post, but for some reason never finished it. Well a jolly Sunday afternoon has been spent drinking a mug of tea, stroking the Tabby on my lap, and finishing this baby off. Though I finished this book a couple of months ago, I've really enjoyed going back to it, I guess this is one of the bonuses of a blog!

So, in an attempt to actually increase my 'read' number, which has been languishing at 117 for months now (thanks, Victor Hugo) I picked up 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', a fairly thin (250 pages), well established classic that I already happened to own. A win win right? My only real hesitation was its standing as a American 20th century classic, which anyone who has read my post about 'On The Road' will realize  is not really the sort of book I get along with.

I principally loath the whole 'freedom', 'America is the home of the rebel', 'stick it to the man-ness' of them. I dunno what it is about America and their obsession with their foundation. We British have firmly go over it, and lets face it, when it comes to the final result we were the more injured party! I see no indication that Americans are any more free than anyone else in the western world, in fact the irony of these books seems to be that they feature Americans rebelling against, well, established America! These rebels either come off as whiney bitches (I'm looking at you Holden Caulfield) or pathetic wasters (that would be you Dean Moriarty). These guys really are rebels without causes, 'oh no I live in a prosperous western country where my liberty is not particularly infringed, where education is free (but we have no interest in it) and I have the opportunity to be whatever I want to be'. Poor baba.

Which is exactly why I actually quite liked 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest'. Randle McMurphy, redheaded rebel as he is, has a damn good reason to rebel. Nurse Ratched (great, Dickens type name) is really, really fucking vile. You love to hate her, and you love McMurphy BECAUSE he stands up to all her crap and makes everyone else stand up too.  The guys in the hospital are treated in a pretty shitty way, and as the book goes on this escalates further and further. You love to hate this establishment because it is grossly unfair, and McMurphy is awesome at sticking it to the man.

Boo! Hiss!

Things gradually escalate through the course of the book as McMurphy continues to challange Nurse Ratched's authority and she continually punishes the inmates further and further, and you are dying, dying for a great 'stick it to the man' happy ending. AND IT DOESN'T HAPPEN. The ending (spoiler alert) is totally brutal and ugly and isn't particularly satisfying. But that's awesome because that is life, you cannot always break the system. McMurphy ends up dead, after one of the inmates takes his own life in a most horrific manner, and the nurse, slightly battered, retains her post. There is no grand victory, only a subtle change among the remaining inmates, the glorious revolution McMurphy aims for does not happen, but he at least gets the other guys thinking.

Realistically, most of the people who really make a difference in this world, the Martin Luther Kings' and Gandhi's, don't life to see the fulfillment of the ideas they promote. Their remarkable lives cause ripples with long lasting implications, but they rarely get to live to see the change the promote. McMurphy, though we don't really see it, profoundly changes all the mens lives even though his campaign fails. It's deep. It's real. It kicks all those daft American rebels butts!  

Recent Book Acquisitions of Interest

Well recent is a bit of a stretch I guess, some of these go back to Christmas!

My first book worthy of showing came from my mother. I should explain that since January 1st me and my fella have been trying to lose weight. I know what a cliche right? Losing weight in the new year, how original! But it needed to be done as we are both a little too fond of our food. So far I've lost a stone and a half (21 pounds in American money) and I aim to lose at least that again, maybe, possibly, we'll see.

Anywho she saw this in a bookshop in Colne and thought I needed to have it, and it turned out she was right.  The cover is made out of that old fashioned brown paper than rips and tears so easily compared to modern glossy book jackets. It's wonderful to see this in such great condition.

The blurb inside the dust jacket tells me the book is about a guy going to a fat farm in order to lose weight. The illustrations are adorable, lots of terrifying looking nurses and grumpy looking fat guys eating soup.

This one I include not so much because it's pretty,but because I think it's awesome it exists! This is the area where I live, and I wasn't aware of much in the way of literary connections round about, except for Dickens visiting once, and the Bronte girls going to some hideous, torturous school up the road.

Now I know there really aren't many literary connections with the area, this is a very thin book, but at least what little literary connections there are I can now read about and bore other people with. Yay!

Another one courtesy of my mother, bought presumably because I'm a teacher and I occasionally have to wear one of these silly gowns. True story. What is most remarkable about this one though is that she found it in some remote part of Spain while walking the way of St. James. How on earth did it get there?

 This beaut was found at one of my local charity shops. I have a major weakness for Folio Society publications, and I'll buy them even if they aren't on a topic I'm particularly fond of, or indeed ones I've never heard of like this one. I have an entire bookcase of Folio Society books, they are a joy to read and I make no excuses for my extensive collection. Note the slipcase underneath. Don't ya just love a slipcase?

And don't ya love these illustrations? Come on, you just have to be heartless to throw out a book like this, shame on you whoever donated this baby.

Finally I have the two books bought for me by my fella for Christmas. He is a cruel and evil man, and even though he knows I'm part way through collecting half a dozen new series of pretty books he buys me two more for a new series of pretty books to ensure that I have to start collecting them. As I say cruel and evil.

So here they are, beautiful, leatherbound Barnes and Noble classics. GRRR, they are just too damn beautiful not to collect.

Look at these illustrations? Being beautiful and all. How dare they!

118/1001 'I FINISHED LES MISERABLES' or 'MY GOD READING THAT BOOK SEEMS TO HAVE PREVENTED ME FROM POSTING IN MONTHS!'!!

Firstly I guess I should apologise for not posting on here in a good while. I could say I've had a lot on recently, and I have in truth. I could say that some pretty big things have been going down in my life over the past few months, and that would be a fact. But really I am a very naughty book blogger who is slapping her own wrist very fiercely right now and promises to be better in the future.  

Ladies and Gentlemen, that was my face upon finally finishing that epic book of epicness (its official title on this blog it seems). I don't think I've felt such complete and utter satisfaction at finishing a book as I did this one. Not ever, and I've read some long books in my time let me tell you!

Now don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike Les Mis. Actually I loved the story, the story was awesome, the story was heartbreaking and heartwarming and made me want to throw the book across the room and scream but also hug it close and keep it under my pillow in the space of a couple of lines. It was an emotional roller coaster. It was amazeballs. It had twists and turns coming from nowhere that even a bitter, twisted old plot predictor such as myself didn't see coming. I both wanted to snog Jean Valjean (though that might have been the Hugh Jackman element showing through) and take him in my arms and tell him everything was going to be OK. Cosette was kinda loveable but also kinda bratish and annoying in a way that teenage girls ACTUALLY ARE (trust me, I work with the little madams all day long). The same goes for Marius, both naively idealistic and utterly self important as most young men are. The innkeeper and his family are vile, just vile, in that way that you kinda enjoy, like hating Umbridge in the Harry Potter books. You hate her so much, even more than Voldemort, because of her petty, petty, smug ways, and that is how much you hate Thenardier!

HOWEVER and it's a big HOWEVER, a big fat giant HOWEVER (hence the capitals, hell I'd increase the font size if I could), Victor Hugo cannot stop ruining what is a perfectly good story with his long, boring-ass ramblings about nothing you want to know about! Seriously this guy cannot shut up about really random things that detract totally from the story and which aren't even that interesting in the first place! They vary from 'The Battle of Waterloo', in more detail than most books on the subject, 'The History of some Weird Convent', which despite an interest in religious stuff I almost nodded off during and my personal favorite 'A Complete and Unabridged History of the Parisian Sewer System', all you ever needed to know about where French poo ends up. These 'mini books' appear right in the middle of areas of the story which are actually quite interesting, so to be honest even if they were about anything you cared about, you end up reading them at double quick speed because you just want to get back to the story! But they are never about anything you care about. Never. 

 So why include all of this rubbish? Well I have a theory about old Victor. I can only assume that Monsieur Hugo was terribly fond of his research, as all good authors are, right? Trouble is I think he resented having to spend ages reading up on the Battle of Waterloo say, when it actually only briefly featured in his story. He had to be thorough, he had to do the reading, but all that research just for one measly scene. Nar. Not for Victor. So he has to share it all with the reader, whether they like it or not. Hence why we have a book that is twice as long as it needs to be and puts most people off because of its size. Derp! No wonder there are so many abridged versions out there, and if you want my advice you will read one of them if you ever attempt this story. I'm not normally one for promoting abridged versions of books, I'm a literary purist don't ya know, but I'm more than willing to make an exception here. More than. 

     "Oh alright you got me"

The Film

Yeah I saw it, yeah I liked it, yeah I still think you need to read the book. Do I need to say much more? Before this film I'd never even seen a version of the musical, my entire back history with the whole Les Mis thang came from the book and the book only. Talking to people who LOVE the musical, and many of them came crawling out of the woodwork when the film was showing, I was so disappointed to learn very few of them had read the book. The talked to me as if I didn't really know the story like they did, which was incredibly frustrating and the opposite was true. Thenardier is not a loveable rogue out to make a quick buck, he's a murdering, sadistic psychopath who wants Jean Valjean dead. Eponine is not a tragic heroine, the victim of unrequited love, she is a thieving, teenaged, prostitute with a crush. Worst of all Marius is not a political hero, forever scared by surviving a protest his comrades did not, he only enters the whole barricade thing part way through, only follows that political group to spite his rich but bigoted grandfather and he renounces the whole thing afterwards and regrets his involvement! Saying you've watched the film or the stage production and that you 'know' Victor Hugo is like saying you've watched '10 Things I Hate About You' or 'She's the Man' and that you 'know' Shakespeare. Beyond retarded. 

I'll be posting up a whole load of reviews in the next few days to make up for what I missed over the last couple of months. Watch this space!