I think people with more technical knowlege have given some great points, but as someone with more of a historical and less literary background I did have to engage a part of my brain more used to intepretating primary source texts. It helped Listening to it on audiobook (great public domain recording) but the way dialogue was structured took a bit of getting used to.

I think it would be interesting to see a more recent translation since this does kind of all go back to it being a french work originally. While more collequial modern langauge in a translation would make it flow easier, I ended up finding some of the 19th century-isms really charming. Especially the parts in the story talking about weed were kind of awesome to hear people talk about how dank Cristos hashish edibles were in 19th century parlance was kind of awesome