Notre-Dame de Paris
Apr. 27th, 2013 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imwaldeI've just now finished Notre-Dame de Paris, better known by its English title of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and this is cause for celebration, because I've been reading that sucker for months. (My edition had it as 593 pages in French.) Vocab-wise, it has to be one of the hardest books I've ever read. It's totally normal for there to be French words I don't know on any given page, but this is the first book where I found a page with dozens of French words I didn't know! Some of these were not even in my French dictionary, and an actual French person I asked didn't know all of them, so I can't feel too bad to not know them, but still: demoralizing.
It's pretty fantastic, once it gets going, but man, does it take a while to get going. The main characters don't even meet until 200+ pages in, and there are long digressions on architecture and the printing press and Paris and of course Notre Dame that I bet don't make it in to abridged editions. But the internet tells me that Hugo's rants about what had been done to Notre Dame inspired a conservation movement, so hey, there's that. Once the book gets going, it still is in no great hurry, but at last things are happening to characters you care about, so it makes for easier reading.
I've come to realize that nearly every movie adaptation is essentially fix-it fic, and I do understand the impulse. The ending is a gut punch, and so many things could have gone differently, if only if only. I struggled a little bit with Esmeralda because I so wished her to be savvier. She was just so naive, I sort of wanted to shake some sense into her. I can deal with naive people falling in love with someone wrong for them, but I cannot deal with them staying loyal in the face of unrelenting douchebaggery. GIRL, YOUR MAIN INTERACTION WAS HIM TRYING TO FUCK YOU, AND THEN HE LET YOU BE CONVICTED FOR HIS MURDER EVEN THOUGH HE WAS, YOU KNOW, STILL ALIVE, AND THEN OH BY THE WAY HE HELPED HUNT YOU DOWN TO BRING YOU TO THE GALLOWS. SNAP OUT OF IT. Sigh. I hated Phoebus even more than Frollo, who at least had the courage of his convictions to be a full-on monster instead of just being a spineless, skeevy asshole. Esmeralda did at least have some good smackdowns of Frollo, but she was a frustrating character. I thought somehow the Quasimodo/Esmeralda baby swap would pay off, but no, guess not.
Hugo is a wonderful writer, and funnier at times than I expected. "If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover, America had not yet been discovered." Heh. And his way of writing is full of energy and charm, it gives me hope Les Miserables will not be just depressing. But it will be a while before I pick up that, my next few books are going to be fluffier things.
In other news, it's not like I expect realism exactly from a show about fairy tale monsters, but Grimm last night annoyed me with a mistake, and I'm not even talking about the atrocious faux-German. Adalind is seen barfing from morning sickness in a bathroom in the apartment where she is staying with Vienna's City Hall (Rathaus) directly out the window. But that's impossible, because directly across the street from City Hall is the National Theater (Burgtheater), which would be the only building to have her view. C'mon, Grimm! Lava monsters, I can buy, but not that.
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bloodorange, I don't think you are around LJ much anymore, but I saw this and thought of you: Blood Orange Margaritas.
And a few days late, but happy birthday,ennuikitten!
It's pretty fantastic, once it gets going, but man, does it take a while to get going. The main characters don't even meet until 200+ pages in, and there are long digressions on architecture and the printing press and Paris and of course Notre Dame that I bet don't make it in to abridged editions. But the internet tells me that Hugo's rants about what had been done to Notre Dame inspired a conservation movement, so hey, there's that. Once the book gets going, it still is in no great hurry, but at last things are happening to characters you care about, so it makes for easier reading.
I've come to realize that nearly every movie adaptation is essentially fix-it fic, and I do understand the impulse. The ending is a gut punch, and so many things could have gone differently, if only if only. I struggled a little bit with Esmeralda because I so wished her to be savvier. She was just so naive, I sort of wanted to shake some sense into her. I can deal with naive people falling in love with someone wrong for them, but I cannot deal with them staying loyal in the face of unrelenting douchebaggery. GIRL, YOUR MAIN INTERACTION WAS HIM TRYING TO FUCK YOU, AND THEN HE LET YOU BE CONVICTED FOR HIS MURDER EVEN THOUGH HE WAS, YOU KNOW, STILL ALIVE, AND THEN OH BY THE WAY HE HELPED HUNT YOU DOWN TO BRING YOU TO THE GALLOWS. SNAP OUT OF IT. Sigh. I hated Phoebus even more than Frollo, who at least had the courage of his convictions to be a full-on monster instead of just being a spineless, skeevy asshole. Esmeralda did at least have some good smackdowns of Frollo, but she was a frustrating character. I thought somehow the Quasimodo/Esmeralda baby swap would pay off, but no, guess not.
Hugo is a wonderful writer, and funnier at times than I expected. "If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover, America had not yet been discovered." Heh. And his way of writing is full of energy and charm, it gives me hope Les Miserables will not be just depressing. But it will be a while before I pick up that, my next few books are going to be fluffier things.
In other news, it's not like I expect realism exactly from a show about fairy tale monsters, but Grimm last night annoyed me with a mistake, and I'm not even talking about the atrocious faux-German. Adalind is seen barfing from morning sickness in a bathroom in the apartment where she is staying with Vienna's City Hall (Rathaus) directly out the window. But that's impossible, because directly across the street from City Hall is the National Theater (Burgtheater), which would be the only building to have her view. C'mon, Grimm! Lava monsters, I can buy, but not that.
bloodorange, I don't think you are around LJ much anymore, but I saw this and thought of you: Blood Orange Margaritas.And a few days late, but happy birthday,
ennuikitten!
