My French, at its best, was just barely good enough to be an obviously American tourist in Paris for a week. I read Les Miz in English.

Either way, it's just so long.

Now I find myself wondering if it's usually abridged in English like Count of Monte Cristo.

We were supposed to read it in French in my senior year French class in high school. I think I got through two pages.

My senior year French teacher was much less ambitious- we read La Petit Prince!

Now I am earwormed with ABBA's Waterloo!

My French teacher was completely burned out. I cut his class all the time, and if there was a quiz and he saw me in the hall, he'd say, "You might want to show up today!" He gave not one fuck about teaching at that point. So for the Les Miz tests, all you had to do was write a grammatically correct French sentence about whatever you wanted to pass.

Gratified to hear all the good Les Miz reviews!

I am not a big fan of musical theater but went to see Les Miz live. Twice, I think, in my late teens. The songs are a part of cultural repertoire by now. I would think even the folks who have never seen the show or read the novel would feel at least a bit of familarity after hearing the first few lines of "On My Own" or "I Dreamed a Dream" sung. Whassaname -- Susan Boyle? The one who won that British singing competition and was in all the presses. Her big song was I Dreamed a Dream, right?

I have never seen the stage production - either live or on tape. I've never heard the full soundtrack and I probably couldn't pick out any song from this before I saw the trailers.

But watching the trailer I really want to see it. I'm also trying to read the book, I think I need to go back to the beginning now that Ive read a summary and have a better idea of what is going on.

Now I find myself wondering if it's usually abridged in English like Count of Monte Cristo.

Abridged version of Les Miz (the novel) can be okay -- there's a lot of extraneous stuff there. But read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo -- the abridged version is basically a "cleaned up" version for squeamish American audiences and leaves out a lot of the plot. Including a barely-veiled lesbian relationship.

But read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo

Yes! Yes! The discussions on gardening, the political nuances. I'm going to have to re-read, I can't remember if the old man is M. Nortier or not.

I have both of those on the Kindle, free version. but I'm thinking maybe a version with footnotes would be a good idea.

Wow 'Suela, that was probably the clearest most pithy description of Les Miz I have ever read. Mad props.