Summer Talking Meme #8

[thisbluespirit]

I really should get on with these because a) they were lovely questions and b) it is really not summer now. It's not even 2015. *cough*

For persiflage_1: What's the best new-to-you book you've read so far this year?

Well, it has been a while since July 2015 when Pers asked me this, but I think it is fair to say that the answer is still undoubtedly The Count of Monte Cristo, which I managed to read last spring. I had avoided it when reading other Dumas novels as a teenager because it was large and I thought it was about someone being in prison for years and finally getting out and having revenge. While that is kind of true, it turns out, Edmond is in prison only for a small part of the book (I know, I feel v dumb that I ever even vaguely thought Dumas would write endless grim prison fiction, lol me) and it is surely the most entertaining revenge tale ever told.

I don't know how my brain works: I can read so little without getting a headache and then I pick up a 1000 page brick and go "ooh, now this I can manage!" and basically solely in terms of having something long and enjoyable (I so rarely enjoy books because they are just such an effort; it's one of the main things I hate about being ill), it was amazing. I should think it is also a pretty darn great old-fashioned ride of improbable long, complicated revenge scheme even when you're not ill.

If you hate it, btw, this is one of those times when I will love you a lot if you don't feel the need to share that fact with me. Thank you.

Anyway, it is all the things (poison and runaway lesbians and treasure and random drug-taking and pirates and bandits and long-lost relatives and cunning disguises! Other things I have since forgot!) and only slows in a few sections where there is too long an absence of the Count, and it is both awesome and ridiculous, regardless of any faults, and I could have taken another few hundred pages of it, easy.


Coming up some way behind it, I thought The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders was pretty great, too (an NF book about the Victorians and their obsession with murder) but that was not a magical huge novel that only rarely gave me headaches. Which is not its fault. It's definitely a recommended read for people with an interest in such things and a brain. Victorians, newspapers and lurid murders and the growth of detection fiction is a wonderful subject for a history book & the author is pretty reliably good.


Plus, in Jan 2015, I managed to finally finish the last few chapters of The English Civil War by Diane Purkiss, which was also excellent (even if I had five years or so in between the first 3/4s and the last). It deals with the Civil War (duh) but from all sorts of different points of views and aspects & is thoroughly engaging and readable. The author clearly has a passion for the era she's keen to communicate. It also mentioned my home town, which gets it extra bonus points, obviously.


But basically Le Comte de Monte Cristo is a thing of endless delight & my brain is a mystery. I feel bad for teenaged me for missing it when I could have read it totally without any adult reservation or irony or headaches, but on the other hand, I seem to have needed it last year.

Comments

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

Runaway lesbians? I read it when I was a teen and, apparently, some aspects of the plot whooshed right over my head. I'll have to look at it again.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, I only read it last year and my memory is already dodgy, but Eugenie Danglars runs off with her music teacher, Louise. Eugenie is not interested in men at all. Neither is Louise. I'm sure they did run away together, I'm sure I didn't make that up now... mostly. ;-)

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

Hee! Thanks for the explanation!

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

I really need to read 'The Count'...always said I would, have never gotten around to it. But your rec definitely makes me think I need to find that time!

*HUGS*

[thisbluespirit]

It's one of those books, isn't it? And it's so long that unless you find yourself stuck home for years on end or someone makes you, you kind of don't, but it really is charmingly random and entertaining & engaging, I found. But I'm a lot more fond of rambling 19th C novels than most people! Still, Dumas is rarely not fun...

[pedanther]

I love The Count of Monte Cristo.

To be fair to your younger self, a lot of retellings for young readers tend to emphasise the bit where he's in prison learning things from the wise old bloke and de-emphasize the bit where he goes around having violent revenge on people. I flicked through one once where the entirety of the book after his escape from prison had been boiled down to a single chapter.

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: That is actually impressive. One chapter? The mind boggles. (Mind, I think until this latest translation even the adult English versions have been missing some of the more, er, random bits.)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs! I've read none of them but am interested in all of them so will see if the library has them. I'm trying to read more non-fiction again this year. I think I managed 12 last year and am aiming for at least 15 this year! So far I'm on book 1 of the NFs - 1606: The Year of Lear by the wonderfully readable Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro. (It's also making me want to re-watch the BBC Lear production with Michael Kitchen and Penelope Wilton and Anton Lesser and other marvellous actors!)

[thisbluespirit]

Glad to be of service! And all of those are pretty great and not my sometimes weirder stuff! :-)

1606 sounds cool too - and nothing wrong with BBC Shakespeare rewatches.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

The library has both the NF books, so I've put in requests for them both. I've shoved the Kindle ed of Monte Cristo on my Amazon wishlist because I am no interested in toting around hefty paperbacks - every ounce I carry makes a difference to my knee, so ebooks are the first choice for me 9 times out of 10.

No, definitely nothing wrong. I just can't recall whether I bought the DVD or borrowed it. I'll have to have a dig through the stack of DVDs atop the TV!

[pedanther]

Which edition is it? I've noticed that ebook editions of classic novels tend to go for older (ie. out of copyright) translations to avoid having to pay licensing fees, and as lost_spook says in another comment the older translators tended to quietly leave out the more entertaining bits involving runaway lesbians and random drug-taking and so on. On the other hand, I see that it might be the Penguin Classics edition translated by Robin Buss; that's the one I own in dead-tree, and it's a good translation with the entertaining bits intact. (My copy even has a foreword talking about the history of translations of the novel, and pointing out the entertaining bits that earlier translators preferred to leave out.)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Oh it's the Penguin edition - I tend to always go for Penguin (or very occasionally OUP) editions of the classics, because - for me - it's worth paying the extra money for the scholarly notes/introduction/etc. (Blame the fact that I bought Penguin editions of the classics for my English degree mumble-teen years ago and never got out of the habit. In the same way that I buy the RSC editions of Shakespeare's plays because I trust Bate & Ramussen to produce good, readable notes and introductions.)

The fact it's the Penguin edition is why it's on my wishlist and NOT on my Kindle yet (which it could've been if I'd bought an ultra cheap edition for under £1). Once the end of the month's out of the way, I'll buy it.

[thisbluespirit]

Yep, it wouldn't be a book to pop in a bag for travelling! Heh. :-)

Good luck!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

In Kindle format though! Perfect!!

If I do own Lear, I can't find it, so I'll see if the library has it to borrow - once I've finished Shapiro's book.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I have had The Count of Monte Cristo on my To-Read shelves foreeeeeeever. I keep looking at it and somehow getting intimidated by its massiveness and not reading it, even though I very much enjoyed The Three Musketeers. I really, really should actually read the thing one of these days, because there is nothing about it that does not sound hugely entertaining.

[thisbluespirit]

It is massive, I know. Somehow lately I seem to have ironically more luck with very long books than shorter ones and I don't know how that works at all. But basically, it is just as entertaining as The Three Musketeers, but twice as long and in many ways, probably objectively better.

But obviously you may need it to prop something up instead.

[liadt]

The Count of Monte Christo is one of those books that has been hanging around on my e-reader for ages. Having 14 tree books that need reading doesn't help! But you've moved it to the front of the e-queue (sorry freebie romances, the rapping rakes will have to wait).

[thisbluespirit]

Only 14 tree books? That is an impressively restrained to-read pile! ;-)

I think probably it will do the rakes good to wait.

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

I think the first play that I ever went to see (certainly the first one I remember) was going to a production of The Count of Monte Christo. It went on over two nights and I was absolutely fasinated by the entire thing. I was extremely young so I barely remembered anything excpet that there were BAD MEN the escape from the prison was one of the most amazing things in the world (they had an acrobat that they actually hurled from the top of the theatre, it was SO COOL.)

I've never actually read the book - I started it and was loving it and then life crashed down and I haven't got round to finishing it. But you've reminded me that I should because I really, really want to. And it was great.

(also, I should remind my mother of the TV version that I bought for her entirely because she started cooing over how amazing Alan Badel is. It's still waiting for us!)

[thisbluespirit]

!!! lycoris, I think maybe you must have seen James Maxwell's adaptation of it!! It was a two-day event back in about 94 & it was apparently fab but lost them a lot of money (because of not everyone being willing to commit to two nights running for the whole thing). (The ones where they did the matinee show followed by the evening worked better). Edmond was played by David Threlfall.

What version has Alan Badel in? Alan Badel is indeed quite a lot of fun - he and Alfred Burke were the only worthwhile things in Children of the Damned.

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

... oh my God, it was David Threlfall! I've just been watching him in Shameless, that is the wierdest mind juxtoposition ever! But yes, that was definietely the one and it was awesome, I am sorry that it lost money. It was incredible though - hence the fact that I remember chunks of it very vividly and I was only 8/9 at the time! (I wish they videoed all plays and they could be acquired, I'd love to see it again!)

Alan Badel's version (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0148018/). We watched two episodes of it and it was really fun but life (and probably Fringe) got in the way, I shall RESSURECT IT! My Mum said that he was her very favourite Mr Darcy ever but alas, that is not a version that exists any longer.

[thisbluespirit]

That's what I'd read about it; that it was amazing, but people weren't prepared to book two nights. It was the last adaptation James Maxwell wrote before he died, although it was directed by Braham Murray. (I was going to tell you who else was in it, as I have the Royal Exchange book, but unusually I don't recognise many names, although it did apparently have Natasha McElhone as Haydee).

It ran from May-Aug 1994, so it's not impossible that they did video it, especially as it was their big thing of the season; it's the acquiring of such things that's the difficulty even if they did. They tend to be only in some the theatre or other intitution's library or whatever. (I don't know anything about whether not they did. No idea when people started video-ing plays - but I mean video cameras for leisure were pretty common from the 80s, so... you never know.)

Ah, thank you! I shall have to look out for it. :-)

[emeraldarrows.livejournal.com]

I love Dumas! I read it as a child and liked it a lot but don't remember it terribly well. I really should read it again.

[thisbluespirit]

I hadn't, but I very much enjoyed my overdue read! :-)

[scripsi.livejournal.com]

I read it several times as a teen and loved it! My grandparents had an old edition in several separate parts, which made it more doable to read and with lots of old-fashion pictures. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Ah, yes, that would be a fun way to do it. :-)

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

Ah, Dumas. I keep meaning to give him a proper go. When I first saw "The Three Musketeers" (the Reed, Chamberlain, etc version), and then found out that we had the book, I pounced immediately, but it was... not like the film. :D I didn't mind the plot changes so much, but the antiquated language was rather an obstacle! And then of course there are so many other books, all vying for attention.

(And then a couple of years later there was an almost complete repeat of this, when children's telly serialised "The Coral Island" (starring a baby Richard Gibson from "'Allo 'Allo" as Ralph, fact fans!) My parents' library seemed designed to frustrate me).

I'm glad you were able to read it, and that you loved it so much. There's nothing quite like reading a really good book. :)

[thisbluespirit]

As an adult, knowing well that the 19th C is not modern English, you might well enjoy both books. The THree Musketeers is wonderfully tongue in cheek as well as being an adventure story. It knows full well that the Musketeers are basically terrible people you would never want as next door neighbours, but huge fun to read about. It's basically a lot of humour and sword-fighting and Milady.

The Count is just great - I think you might well like it even more as a novel. I seem to have found it accidentally readable in pretty much exactly the same way as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

There are some 19th C writers who still a really fun, readable story - and I think Dumas and Wilkie Collins are at the top of my list for that when on form.

(For Count of Monte Cristo, you want the latest Penguin edition, because previous English translations have been a bit mean about editing out random drug-taking, lesbians and things. For some reason... :loL:)

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

I haven't read The Count of Monte Cristo but I thought that is what it's about? I hadn't read it for that reason. Maybe I should rethink that.

The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders sounds really good. I'll have to try it.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, technically, it is, but the prison bit isn't very long and then the revenge bit is epic and improbable and involves all these people, and basically, it's Dumas at his most entertaining!

It is! She's written quite a lot of Victorian social history & she's always very readable - I have Consuming Passions (about Leisure & shopping in the 19th C) and The Victorian House by her, too. Bonus murders and literature is good though!