Melanie > Recent Status Updates

I’ve been reading this book for the past 3 hours and I’ve read a solid 23 pages, which is actually significantly speedier than my usual rate. 🦵🏻🩼🥃 This chapter is 73 pages long, so that should only take me about 5 more hours to finish. 🤗

Pour one out for my boy Gollum, <spoiler>he died doing what he loved (dancing with the Ring)</spoiler> and that's all any of us can aspire to.

’Help me, Pippin! It’s all going dark again, and my arm is so cold.’
‘Lean on me, Merry lad!’ said Pippin. ‘Come now! Foot by foot. It’s not far.’
‘Are you going to bury me?’ said Merry.

'All your words are to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.'
'What do you fear, lady?' he asked.
'A cage,' she said. 'To stay behind bars...'

DNF @50%

52%

“Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here pointed out, he would speedily have perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was not in the subterranean gallery of the Rue Saint-Denis.”

God, if only Jean Valjean had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Paris sewers, he would have known exactly where he was! What a loser!

“And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.”
She tried to smile once more and expired.

Marius goes to the police station- the normal police isn’t here but there’s a substitute. He turns around and it’s Javert!! 🎉🍾🎊 Melanie thrilled!! Marius is telling him about Jean Valjean. Oh no! Melanie worried!!

The major characters are all starting to meet and interact with each other, and we’re only 30 hours in!

Whatever Victor Hugo is doing is really growing on me- at first I was saying “we really don’t need two and a half hours about the Battle of Waterloo or this random priest’s life story” but by the time we got to convents I thought 1.5 hours was a reasonable digression length, now I think we really could have spent more time on Marius’ dad’s life story. Thrilled to hear the backstory of every ABC member.

“To prove this, we will confine ourselves to recording here and to briefly mentioning a real and incontestable fact, which, however, bears no reference in itself to, and is not connected by any thread whatever with the story which we are relating.” 💩 I mean, this entire book (Volume 2, Book 6) is not connected to the story so whatever

Ok, so this book is divided into 5 volumes which are divided into books (48) which are divided into chapters (365). Each volume is the length of a normal book, so I just finished Volume One but I’m 12 hours in. I believe the first book in Volume Two is an in-depth history of the battle of Waterloo. 💩 I’m having a good time.

“The incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known at M. sur M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a memory in that town that a serious gap would exist in this book if we did not narrate them in their most minute detail.”

Babe, this is a 1300 page book, i am absolutely not worried about there not being enough detail. Also it’s gotten really good.

Ok we just went through every single piece of pop culture in 1817 France. I do appreciate how often the author goes “none of this is relevant and idk what’s going on”

Ok, so book one (of 48…) was an extremely detailed biography of the candlestick priest (look, I only know the musical). Was any of this relevant to the plot? No. We haven’t even started the plot yet, but the author has told us multiple times that none of this is relevant.

Apparently waitressing is easy work that is stress-free, according to this awful protagonist. There’s a 0% chance I will finish this book.

Eccentric blind gentleman coroner hires crazy medical examiner, has autopsy performed on beach. Magistrates horrified.

Why did they hire Harry?? He’s doing all the same things that they hated in the last book, but now with authority!

Ralph: 🤬🍸⚓️👨🏼‍✈️
Laurie: 🩼🛌🦵🏻📖🫖❤️‍🩹
Andrew: ✨👼🏼💖

Reading this like it's the Bible. Should be finished by 2026. Unless something goes terribly, terribly wrong, I can't imagine giving this less than 5 stars.

Desperately need Does the Dog Die but for The Woman in a Natasha Pulley novel.

“I’ve just brought a bit of Nelson for you to try.” 💀🫥💀

If this wasn’t for book club I would not be reading it anymore. 🫥

“I have reached the far side of thirty.” So far every line is a banger, hopefully this continues. There’s already been a bicycle joust.

Pretty sure my review of this book is going to be one paragraph about how great the book is and five paragraphs about lactose intolerance. 🥛

If I finish it then I'll have to wait another year for the next one, so the goal is to just take an entire year to read this, I guess.

Not me reading this book at midnight crying because my favorite character had a lame death. 🤡

Omg I’m going to die of old age before I finish this book, I’ve been reading it for 9 days and I’m not even a quarter through. After every scene I have to take a break of 30 minutes to 4 days to process, because every scene is absolutely iconic. My stress level is at 400%, because what if something bad happens to one of these protagonists who are actively trying to kill all the other protagonists???

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