I have found shiny and I will not stop until I have it.

Not much has happened in the past few days. Host mother has not succeeded in making me cry again, although it's mostly because I've stopped expecting much, started avoiding her when I can, and sucked it up and started doing the fucking dishes (by hand, because she refuses to show me how the dishwasher works). Actually she's been more-or-less tolerable lately, aside from embarrassing me about my Les Mis obsession while her daughter was over for dinner tonight. The thought of staying here until May makes me die a little bit inside, but I can probably make it until December.

Went to the Carnavalet temp exhibit on the French Revolution yesterday, and I have to say it's not half as shiny as their FR permanent collection. They do have a portrait of Saint-Just I'd never seen before, but mostly it appeared to be "our FR collection is closed down for building repairs, we might as well make the best of it... let's dig up some things we don't normally bother showing, display them along with the less-interesting parts of our permanent collection, and charge admission."

The best part of the visit was browsing through the bookshop--which, by the way, is a place of joy and financial perdition for the nerdy at heart--and finding a book called Paris au temps de Balzac. Which contained sections on the neighborhoods of Paris, construction and urban renewal from the 1820s to the 1840s, sanitation and living conditions, literary and society salons, fashionable and oft-frequented places for all classes of society (including students), plenty of other things I didn't see while skimming, and--in the back--a breakdown of major events by year from 1815 to 1850 and lists of major public figures, from writers and artists to mayors and prefects of police. All gorgeously illustrated. I WANT IT. It is €37 but I want it like BURNING. I might end up splitting the cost of a used copy with elyse24601, and in any case if when I get it I will post sections and translations online. Because it is too shiny not to.


P.S. Further proof that the public-domain Hapgood translation of Les Mis is utter shit: it renders Cosette's "Avec ce machin-là sur la tête, j’ai l’air de madame Chien-fou" as "With that machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad-dog." Which, aside from being awkwardly literal, is plain wrong: "machine" means "machine," but "machin" means "thing" or "contraption" or "whatchamacallit" or "so-and-so." It's used with obnoxious frequency in spoken French. I'd put it as "With that getup on my head I look like Madame Mad-Dog." Or more loosely, "DAAAD, you can't seriously think I'd wear that thing in public, like, ewwww."

I have found shiny and I will not stop until I have it.

Not much has happened in the past few days. Host mother has not succeeded in making me cry again, although it's mostly because I've stopped expecting much, started avoiding her when I can, and sucked it up and started doing the fucking dishes (by hand, because she refuses to show me how the dishwasher works). Actually she's been more-or-less tolerable lately, aside from embarrassing me about my Les Mis obsession while her daughter was over for dinner tonight. The thought of staying here until May makes me die a little bit inside, but I can probably make it until December.

Went to the Carnavalet temp exhibit on the French Revolution yesterday, and I have to say it's not half as shiny as their FR permanent collection. They do have a portrait of Saint-Just I'd never seen before, but mostly it appeared to be "our FR collection is closed down for building repairs, we might as well make the best of it... let's dig up some things we don't normally bother showing, display them along with the less-interesting parts of our permanent collection, and charge admission."

The best part of the visit was browsing through the bookshop--which, by the way, is a place of joy and financial perdition for the nerdy at heart--and finding a book called Paris au temps de Balzac. Which contained sections on the neighborhoods of Paris, construction and urban renewal from the 1820s to the 1840s, sanitation and living conditions, literary and society salons, fashionable and oft-frequented places for all classes of society (including students), plenty of other things I didn't see while skimming, and--in the back--a breakdown of major events by year from 1815 to 1850 and lists of major public figures, from writers and artists to mayors and prefects of police. All gorgeously illustrated. I WANT IT. It is €37 but I want it like BURNING. I might end up splitting the cost of a used copy with elyse24601, and in any case if when I get it I will post sections and translations online. Because it is too shiny not to.


P.S. Further proof that the public-domain Hapgood translation of Les Mis is utter shit: it renders Cosette's "Avec ce machin-là sur la tête, j’ai l’air de madame Chien-fou" as "With that machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad-dog." Which, aside from being awkwardly literal, is plain wrong: "machine" means "machine," but "machin" means "thing" or "contraption" or "whatchamacallit" or "so-and-so." It's used with obnoxious frequency in spoken French. I'd put it as "With that getup on my head I look like Madame Mad-Dog." Or more loosely, "DAAAD, you can't seriously think I'd wear that thing in public, like, ewwww."