Quote:
Originally Posted by orlok
Not in French, no...
Try reading 1400+ pages in half an hour each morning, and about the same each night, if I didn't fall asleep first. Took me about 3 weeks  . |
ah, I see.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drofgnal
Yea, it does slow you down, but the effort for some books is worth it. One I couldn't finish was Les Miserables. It's longer than War and Peace. There was one chapter devoted entirely to the battle of Waterloo. It was 75 pages long in hardback with miniscule text. The only relation to the story was a couple who were robbing corpses of money, jewlery etc in the aftermath of the battle. It would turn out to be Cossete's adopted family that Jan Valjan rescued her from. I said I had enough and put it down. Someday, maybe I'll try again.
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whoo hoo, you couldn't put up with the Waterloo battle but had finished the whole first volume without complaining?? I mean the long, long, loooooong part about Bishop Myriel, while he didn't play any important role in the story? That was a long time ago, and I can only guess - that irrelevant part was like some hundred pages to me. The MOST boring stuff I've ever encountered. Apart from War and Peace...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Poppaea
Les Miserables has been sitting on my shelf, staring at me for years. You just made sure that is where it will stay for a couple of years longer.  There are too many books I am keen on reading for me to waste time. |
It's more interesting than you give it credit for. I assure you. That is, if you survive some first hundred pages without going to MobileRead and blame me for my recommendation... It took me 2 years to push myself through all the boring things at the beginning - you know the style the French folks liked to write in those days: wordy descriptions and irrelevant details. I still remember going to a secondhand bookstore, picked up the Les Misérables - it came in 4 old, thick, dusty and fuzzy books. The lines were faded and I had to guess in many places.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cearbhallain
I'll give everyone this tip though: If you're not laughing by the third page, get a different one. The Three Musketeers is hilarious, which fact serves to offset the tragedy of the story.
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that explains why I didn't enjoy The 3 Musketeers! I thought, "Duh, this bores me to death!" and wondered why people kept reading it!