• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
• by Alexandre Dumas
• [rated by PBS readers as #41]
• 591 pages!!

8/29/19

There is an outside chance that I will finish this book in a week.

Over 100 pages in, I am almost timid to jinx this by saying anything. It still has around 500 pages to do me wrong. But right now, the Count just might be that find I have been looking for.

Starting with an extensive introduction almost 20 pages long, this one was actually fascinating. Maybe the best extensive intro I have ever read. Truly put you in the mind of the book, along with incredibly interesting tidbits about Dumas and his life.

Credit where credit is due. This is from a series of classics reprinted by Barnes & Noble. And the intro on this alone will make me keep my eyes open for more in this series.

So I was already in good humor from the intro. Then the book starts. Reading that it started as a newspaper serial had left me shuddering. My recent foray with another initial newspaper serial turned book, Gullivers Travels, did not exactly endear me to that genre.

But boy oh boy. This one works!

From the first chapter, after that intro, I was hooked.

A great story that still reads great. There are so many books (and movies, for that matter) that have been appreciated for their breaking of ground, though since that time, one has to admit that same ground has been righteously improved on.

Not the Count! His is a great story that has all the components of being a page turner throughout. The story telling itself is so visually drenched, even for a less visual person like me that one can forgive the act of making it into several movies. But you know? They didn’t hold up. This is partly why my love of the Count feels so surprising, after the movies made of it that I saw and that left me flat. I think this plot is so strong that a book is the only way to go.

I read a reader’s review on Amazon that said that after the first 100 pages, you won’t be able to put it down. If that’s true, watch out, cuz I couldn’t put it down through the first 100 pages!

The Count is a juicy, suspenseful ride of a story. We’ll see how it holds up, but so far…

This is everything I could ask for from a book.

Fingers crossed!

11/3/19 – FINISHED!!

COUNT OH COUNT,

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!!?!?!?!?

This was the shit. All I can say!

It really is strange that I think I’ve seen two Monte Cristo movies and they were completely marginal. Of course, having said that, I also remember at least one of them as having a bunch of swashbuckling fights in it, something that basically never appears in the book! So liberties were indeed taken and not for the better.

I don’t know what I expected out of these 100 books but it would seem like I got the one thing I knew I was hoping for – a great story and one that I’m sure I’ll return to again.

600 pages and it never lets up. Never lets down either. I loved it. A wonderful detailed story, like Lonesome Dove was and will hopefully be again.

Funny, isn’t it? A terrible book – you could describe and write about for ages. A great book leaves you speechless. A great book like this has both majesty and magic.

I have had a few wonderful surprises so far on this journey, mostly in the teens category. But the Count was a major high point so far.

It’s funny. It is such a big book that I didn’t bring it with me to lunch too often, as it was a little hard to carry with other stuff. But whenever I did and someone saw it and recognized it, their eyes would open wide and they would exclaim, “The Count of Monte Cristo? Wow! I remember loving that book!”

Well, love it again. Funny, how two different books could start as serials in papers, then become books, then end up on this list and then have me read them. One – Gulliver’s Travels – bloated, windbaggy, endless, awful. The other – The Count of Monte Cristo – from page one all the way through, a treasured book for my lifetime!

Wow. Don’t know what is going to follow that.

Additional Note: As I walked away from writing this, I realized that another gift I got – that I didn’t dare hope for – was that a classic like Cristo would read this contemporary! I just pictured myself slogging through antiquated language and trying to enjoy the story. But no!

Another gift beyond measure.