You didn’t toss out the parts you didn’t like. A friend of mine told me that once, when he was talking to a group of Russian-literature professors, he confided to them that he and his American colleagues often had difficulty with the many highly detailed accounts of battles in “ War and Peace.” Oh, the Russians answered, we skip those parts! So boring! You should skip them, too, they said.Īmericans are unlikely to take that advice. Likewise their children and grandchildren. But, from what I can tell, even readers of that time occasionally grew tired of the grandiloquence, and when they did they were not afraid to skip.

For great events, great language was needed. It recorded sweeping changes: kingdoms rose and fell, peoples were enslaved or freed. This fullness, overfullness, was endemic to the genre to which “Les Misérables” belonged, the nineteenth-century historical novel, a form that was immensely popular in its day. Even after the trims, his version is still more than twelve hundred pages long.

“It is not uncommon to find eight or ten adjectives appended to a single noun,” Denny noted, with wonder. Or he said them too many times the first time. But others, he was not ashamed to say, were due to his feeling that the book was just too long-winded. Certain of them, he said, were for sense. If you’re unsure of what to read next, Book Riot’s TBR offers book recommendations based on your favorite books! Learn more about our book subscription service now.A few years ago, reading the introduction to an English-language version of Hugo’s “ Les Misérables,” I found the translator, Norman Denny, confessing that he had made a number of cuts in the French text. We all need a feel-good fantasy to curl up with this winter, so don’t miss out on the top fantasy books of the year! Once you’ve explored books like The Selection, consider expanding your reading horizons with our list of queer romance YA fantasy books. The magical gift, Earthsong, that has led to her social exile proves valuable when she’s tasked with finding the Queen Who Sleeps, the only one who can save the nation from destruction. That is, until the day Lagrimarian soldiers and an Elsiran spy enter her village. Jasminda lives a solitary life in the Elsiran countryside.

But now that it has begun to crack, Lagrimar is waging war against their ancient rival.

For many years, the Mantle, a magical veil separating the two lands, has kept the peace. The rulers of Elsira and Lagrimar have vied for domination over each other for centuries.

The selection the betrothed