I would not read the full, unabridged.. I am snoring. 🥱 Where is the intrigue? And the vengeance?! I’m only reading this for my O’Neill study. Truth be told, I thought I’d never in a thousand thousand years attempt to read it. I did tho like The Three Musketeers. Between this and Les Miserables, there are some similarities and then again, some differences. Victor Hugo was intense, no autumnal doldrums… no break in the narrative. Jean Val Jean is just constantly on the run, Hugo did it better. Here Edmond Dantès is imprisoned at 18 years for 14 years until his 33rd year, and hastily, summons the treasure and makes the business to exact punishment on others, or, to vindicate them. And yet nobody sees through his facąde, noone is making do to question the young man how he came to be wealthy and in possession of such a fortune. Hmph. I thought it’d be more believable is he was an Old Geezer. 🪿

“I say that when a thing is beyond my comprehension, I stop thinking about it and pass on to something else.”

Maybe I’m depressed. Writing reviews is the only thing that makes me happy atall anymore. Nothing gives me greater joy now than absorbing the fleshy threads of an old novel, “Old Novel” being something of an oxymoron-moron I guess. Then sharing it with the world, for what it’s worth I don’t care about likes, followers, having an audience, all that matters to me is getting the thought down, and cataloguing information that maybe I found invigorating.. What really gets my mojo gushing though is the phenomenon of its author, more than just whom penned it; I guess some part of me loves to be apart of THAT. Even vicariously. I’d rather be apart of then, than be apart of now. Now is fine, earlier just felt raw, more from the soul, if the soul is a feeling, emotional caduceus- than it does now. 

“. . . Vagueness is doubtfulness, and the wise man will stay away from doubtful things.”

And wise to doubt still, and doubt himself; the irony is that the dim, dull, and dumb are always so self-assured even when they’re so blitheringly misinformed. It saddens me deeply that I share a world with folks who can’t tell crap 💩 from the absention, or the great pile of nothing. 🫡

After a few days of trying to struggle through chapters of nothing but dialogue I started skipping ahead and finally DNFed. To be clear, I'm a description and scenery reader, I don't like dialogue, I love great prose, I love seeing scenes in my head.

The beginning was great. For the first 200+ pages I was very much in. I'm down with Dantes's revenge and I'm down with the Count. For awhile he seemed like a rock star.

But when the colossal list of names started blurring together and all the M.s and Mme.s flipped around, and especially when the dialogue got to a point of complete takeover talking about numbers and money and armchair politics, I could not care less. I do not care. I forgot what the plot was. The Count isn't even in it that much anymore, it's just talking heads and people I don't care about. I don't even remember who I'm supposed to hate, everyone is just talking at once in the same haughty huffy tone.

I'm very sure it picks up and gets awesome in the later quarter, and I'm very sure I'm missing a lot by reading an abridged version, but I get the gist and I'm annoyed so I'm stopping.

Gotta read the real version. Abridged version is average.