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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1818 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 12, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Opinions on abridged versions?

Approaching the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, which at 1300 pages has worked out nicely.

I'm now eyeing up Les Miserables (no spoilers please). While I'm not averse to reading another 1300 page monster the reviews suggest that a good portion of this is spent on the author's digressions into history and dissertations on society. I'm leaning towards the abridged version (still a healthy ~900 pages) as I'm reading for pleasure rather than intellectual edification. I've always read unabridged versions before now but I've sometimes felt like many authors take the piss (looking at you in particular Dostoesky). On the other hand part of reading the unabridged versions is that it grants the privilege of talking shit about authors who take the piss, which counts as one of the pleasures of reading.

It's always better to read literature in its unabridged form, as the writer intended.

If that was actually the case, editors wouldn’t exist. Frequently the author is blind to their own follies and very often one of those follies is not knowing to cut things that are irrelevant and pointless digressions (see Scott’s writings for an extreme example).

If that was actually the case, editors wouldn’t exist.

The "unabridged" versions that went to print are edited from the manuscripts.

If they were ”as the writer intended”, they would be unedited. Clearly there is significant benefit for books to not be literally as the author wrote and abridged editions are just another point on that continuum.

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