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doodlyroses.com
🎹 sharon su
@doodlyroses.com
3.9K followers 160 following 4.3K posts
Classical pianist, recording artist, writer | she/her

Website: sharonsu.com

Biweekly newsletter: https://buttondown.com/doodlyroses

One of the “Three Musketeers of classical Bluesky”
— @violanorth.bsky.social
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doodlyroses.com
Chapter 13, where I’m glad I’m getting to the end of Book 1 because there has been no plot for 50+ pages, and I develop a theory that The Good Place is based on Les Mis

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/15/1...
The bishop is so kind to all creatures that he "sprained his ankle trying not to step on an ant." Precious, precious man. I bet he would try to do snail CPR. (I am now genuinely wondering if Doug Forcett of The Good Place is modeled on the bishop from Les Misérables.)
December 15, 2025 at 6:40 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 12, in which Hugo takes a break from storytelling to go on an epic rant against mediocre rich guys and is petty enough to identify specific ones

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/14/1...
"Principle of success: prosperity implies capability. Win the lottery and you are a clever man. Whoever wins is respected. Be born lucky, that is all. If luck is yours, the rest will follow. Be fortunate and you will be thought great." I love this. Man raging against the prosperity gospel. You can tell this is a guy who saw too many lucky dipshits gain unearned power and fame and admiration and that this fills him with so much simmering rage. I feel you, Victor, I feel you.
December 14, 2025 at 7:39 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 11, where Hugo and I have very different ideas of what “non political” means

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/13/1...
This whole chapter is like an end-of-thread disclaimer. Because the previous chapter had the bishop engaging in political debate (to the DEATH, Hugo is now concerned that you might think Myriel is overtly political or philosophical, so now he has to write a whole thing so some "down with Drumpf" liberal blue wave poster doesn't Ruthkanda Forever him. I just read that last sentence over and I think the internet brain rot has completely ruined me.
December 13, 2025 at 9:56 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 10, the chapter that made me want to shake the bishop and yell at him because he hits up an old man and DEBATES HIM TO DEATH

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/12/1...
Part I, Book 1, Chapter 10 The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light In this chapter, the bishop debates an old man to death. Not hyperbole, the man actually dies. Myriel, what the f are you doing.
December 13, 2025 at 5:37 AM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 9, in which I realize why the relationship between the bishop and his sister makes perfect sense to me lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/11/9...
Both Baptistine and I see our place in life as one of serving someone we love (for her: the bishop; for me: my cat), whose actions and motivations we may not fully understand, but which we support because we respect them and trust that they are serving a great purpose (for the bishop: God; for my cat: being a cat).
December 11, 2025 at 7:10 PM
doodlyroses.com
Always looking for an excuse to post this
December 11, 2025 at 4:09 AM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 8, in which my darling bishop has to contend with a “DEBATE ME, BRO” type guy and gives us all a blueprint on how to gently deal with edgelords

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/10/8...
I am pretty sure Senator-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is based on a real guy, because Victor Hugo was himself a senator and this chapter feels 100% like it was written so he could skewer his most hated colleagues). The chapter opens by introducing the senator as a man who "made his way regardless of all those obstacles he would have encountered that we call conscience, solemn oath, justice, duty." Get his ass, Victor.
December 10, 2025 at 9:09 PM
doodlyroses.com
waiting for both the Catholics and the sacred music people to yell at me
The bishop goes to the tiny remote village he'd planned to visit, everything is totally fine, no outlaws to be found. When he gets there he finds there's none of the gear he needs to sing a special song (100k, I'm not Catholic, I am hanging on best I can here)
December 9, 2025 at 8:08 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 7, which is heartwarming and funny and gives me an excuse to tell the story of the most perplexing girl I ever overheard in Paris

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/09/7...
December 9, 2025 at 8:07 PM
doodlyroses.com
More important than the appearance of the silver is the fact that I have proved the bishop is a Hot Priest

I am a seriously scholarly person
In his description of the bishop's bedroom, Hugo drops this intriguing detail: ...behind a curtain, the toilet articles that betrayed the old stylish ways of the man of the world." As a reminder if you're more used to reading modern stuff, "toilet" here doesn't refer to the thing you poop in, but to stuff you use to groom yourself. Given that the bishop is described as "good-looking" in Chapter 1, and is just vain enough to keep himself well-groomed like the fancy boy he once was, I think we can safely conclude that the bishop is canonically hot. This is very important to me, thank you for your attention to this matter.
December 8, 2025 at 6:27 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 6, in which I get way too excited that the silver has appeared lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/08/6...
Part I, Book 1, Chapter 6 Under Whose Protection He Placed his House Silverware alert!!!!!!! It's mentioned as a sort of passing note, but I have seen the musical! I know the significance of this particular detail! Victor Hugo, I know exactly what you are doing!
December 8, 2025 at 6:25 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 5, in which I make an argument about who the real hero is in the bishop’s day-to-day life

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/07/5...
The bishop's meals are simple to the point of being bleak; his breakfast and lunch are rye bread dipped in milk, which sounds only slightly better than the toast sandwich, a depressingly absurd item inflicted on us by the British who seem determined to outperform the rest of the world in inventing sad foods. Dinner is boiled vegetables and soup, unless he has a parish priest to dinner and needs something fancier, at which point Madame Magloire rustles up some fish from the lake or game from the mountains. I am genuinely concerned that my darling Monsieur Bienvenu has a nutritional deficiency.
December 7, 2025 at 6:55 PM
doodlyroses.com
Apple Music: here are the albums you listened to most this year

Me: yeah this sounds about right
Screenshot of my Apple Music Replay showing my top 5 albums of 2025. They are 1. Kpop Demon Hunters 2. Mayhem by Lady Gaga 3. From the Pyre by The Last Dinner Party 4. Les Misérables 10th Anniversary staged concert 5. GNX by Kendrick Lamar
December 2, 2025 at 8:53 PM
doodlyroses.com
It’s happening
My hand holding a paperback copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misèrables, translated into English by Christine Donougher. The book is like 3 inches thick, it’s absurd, you could build a house using these books as bricks
November 30, 2025 at 12:23 AM
doodlyroses.com
So it turns out the Marquis de Lafayette was at General Lamarque’s funeral

I’m going to need a Hamilton-Les Mis crossover event where Lafayette raps over “Red and Black”
The cortege was diverted to the Place de la Bastille where speeches were made in favour of a Republic. When a member of the crowd rose waving a black-bordered red flag with the words "Liberty or Death" on it, the crowd broke into rebellion and shots wore exchanged with government troops.181 Marquis de Lafayette, who had given a speech in praise of Lamarque, called for calm, but the disorder spread. 1101
November 24, 2025 at 8:03 AM
doodlyroses.com
Victor Hugo was basically a tumblr shitposter, this is absolutely incredible
When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. He was confident that he would be offered the dictatorship, as shown by the notes he kept at the time: "Dictatorship is a crime. This is a crime I am going to commit." but he felt he had to assume that responsibility.
November 18, 2025 at 5:54 PM
doodlyroses.com
hahaha get his ass, Victor
On the other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility."
November 18, 2025 at 5:51 PM
doodlyroses.com
WAIT VICTOR HUGO IS THE ONE WHO INTRODUCED CHOPIN AND GEORGE SAND??
He was also on friendly terms with Frederic Chopin. He introduced him to Amantine de Francueil (known as "George Sand" despite being female) who became Chopin's lover. In 1849, Hugo attended Chopin's funeral.
November 18, 2025 at 5:50 PM
doodlyroses.com
Unexpected Victor Hugo/Romantic composers crossover
Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano - with only one finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 1581 Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today,
November 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM
doodlyroses.com
What no not yet

I did get stuck on this upsetting 24601 lore
Hugo believed himself to have been conceived on 24 June 1801, which is the origin of Jean Valjean's prisoner number 24601
November 18, 2025 at 5:41 PM
doodlyroses.com
So Victor Hugo def had ADHD right
More than a quarter of the novel-by one count 955 of 2,783 pages-is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Toilers of the Sea. One biographer noted, "The digressions of genius are easily pardoned". The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris. The one about convents he titles "Parenthesis" to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the storyline.
November 18, 2025 at 4:57 PM
doodlyroses.com
Clint Smith gets it, also I do highly recommend his book How the Word Is Passed

share.libbyapp.com/title/6315271
The ability to connect the past and present is one of the most crucial functions of learning history. A curriculum that ignores these connections promotes a kind of lie by omission. We owe it to our young people not to lie to them anymore. A democracy whose citizens operate with fundamentally different understandings of the past and its implications cannot sustain itself. Americans desperately need a shared story, with all its complexities and contradictions. Without that, this American experiment, as we understand it, will end.
November 18, 2025 at 4:46 PM
doodlyroses.com
This is the thing that drives me a little insane about people saying that slavery/racism/systemic inequality is “inappropriate” for children—young people are fully capable of understanding complexity, in some ways more so than adults

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
This duality made intuitive sense to the students. They understood that their country and its heroes, like all of us, aren't perfect-that everyone makes mistakes, even if we don't immediately understand them as such. What we do is try to learn from our mistakes to become better versions of ourselves. "Doesn't seem that hard," an eighth grader in Memphis said, shrugging her shoulders. "Just say both things."
November 18, 2025 at 4:44 PM
doodlyroses.com
Sometimes I think about this guy and I hope he's having a great life
Screenshot of an old tweet of mine. Text reads "The guy behind me at the LA Phil today had never seen a concert grand piano before and couldn't stop marveling at it and kept saying 'I didn't know they made pianos that big!' I hope life only continues to bring him more such astonishment and delight"
November 14, 2025 at 5:46 AM
doodlyroses.com
Not impressed by mommy’s music school training
A brown tabby wearing a yellow collar is looking away from the viewer. A brown tabby wearing a yellow collar is staring at the viewer with wide green eyes that look startled and maybe a little judgmental.
November 11, 2025 at 7:15 PM