Les Miserables; A new translation by Julie Rose

This may be a silly question, but, I took an interest in Les Miserables by watching the play. Recently I purchased the book with a new translation by Julie Rose; and am wondering how I went about reading it.
The contents pages tell me that there are five parts, but within them parts are chapters (I am guessing) from books of Les Miserables.
E.g.

Part One: Fantine

BOOK ONE. A Just Man
BOOK TWO. The Fall
BOOK THREE. In The Year 1817
BOOK FOUR. To Entrust Is Sometimes To Abandon
BOOK FIVE. The Descent
BOOK SIX. Javert
BOOK SEVEN. The Champmethieu Affair
BOOK EIGHT. Aftershock

Do I read through the book as any other book or do i read all of book one in part one, then two, then three, four and five; then carry one book two in parts one, two, three, four and five?
Please advise.
Thankyou.

Ok, yeah, kinda complicated :)

There are 5 Volumes or "Parts" to the novel;
within these Volumes are 9 Books;
and within each Book there are numerous chapters.

So I would assume that the book you have is laid out so that you just read it page by page and don't have to skip around going back and forth.

If you start on page one and go forward it's perfectly safe to assume you're getting it right.

I read one edition that didn't even identify the major parts -- FANTINE, etc. -- with anything but the title. It's just Hugo's way of breaking the very large book into sections, and those sections into sections, etc. The book was serialized when it came out, so that may be why.

As the King said to Alice...begin at the beginning. Go on untily ou come to the end. Then stop.

I just started this new translation as well. Perhaps we should keep a running post on how we like it.

Tom White
Long Beach, CA

Bump.

I'd like to read it - it is the one really long work of Western literature that I haven't read which is generally considered of importance.

Any advice on translations? Currently the old Penguin (called Les Miserables and the new Penguin (The Wretched) are in the shops.

Any suggestions?

I am reading the new Penguin translation by Christine Donougher. 800 pages out of 1300. When do I get to the sewer digression?