Les Misérables: Unabridged

I don't know when Jacqueline and I started reading Les Misérables, and if she does (and I'm pretty sure she does), she's not telling. But I do have a note on my The Book I Read 2015 list that says, 

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (in the 500s now)

And we're now on page 1130, so I'd guess that means we started in 2014 at the latest. But the movie came out in late 2012 (December 5, 2012), and it would make sense that we started reading it shortly after we saw the movie, which might mean that we started in early 2013. Yowza.

Either way, Jacqueline and I have been at it for quite a while, reading two or three pages four nights a week for hundreds of weeks.

And now the end is nigh.

We have less than 100 pages to go.

*

It's very exciting.

It's also kind of sad, because I've really enjoyed reading this book. Many is the time when I've been brought up short by a particularly poignant quotation, and I've been both impressed by the job that  Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg did in making their musical--compressing, stylizing, emphasizing--and aghast at some of the truly great moments that they passed up. Several times I've wished that I could write a play . . . or a musical . . . based on some of the moments that Alain and Claude-Michel passed up.

I'm going to try to convince her that we need to read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame next. Hey, it could work. There was a Disney movie, right? Maybe two?

* Don't tell Jacqueline I borrowed her book for this picture. She'd be pissed. **

** She probably already knows. It's pretty hard to pull a fast one on an autistic person. Did I tell you about the time I tried to hide a camera in her room so that I could get some video footage of a Girlsketeers Meeting? Sheesh. That didn't work out AT ALL.