The Count of Monte Cristo -- I've read it a few times and I know I'll read it again. While there are a few books I've read more than once, I can't think of any I know I will read again.
If anyone wants a recommendation for another good book from around the same date, I recommend Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has it's adventure aspects, but is also just a great tale of male friendship between two different characters.
- "In the 19th century, hashish was embraced in some European literary circles. Most famously, the Club des Hashischins was a Parisian club dedicated to the consumption of hashish and other drugs; its members included writers Théophile Gautier, Dr. Moreau de Tours, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire and Honoré de Balzac.[19]"
But really a nice story.
Optical telegraphs! They were a recent invention in Dumas' era,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
(How did Dumas colorfully describe those things? I think this is the paragraph: "Yes, a telegraph. I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle, and I assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at the opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think of genii, sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of the occult sciences, until I laughed aloud at the freaks of my own imagination.")
For even more fun, if one enjoys fantasy, Steven Brust's _The Baron of Magister Valley_ is TCoMC w/ all the names changed and the serial numbers filed off in a fantasy setting (and _The Phoenix Guards_ is _The Three Musketeers_, _Five Hundred Years After_ is _Five Years After_, and _The Viscount of Adrilahnkha_ is _The Man in the Iron Mask_).
It's old, but the beginning especially is just a non-stop adventure. It always drags a bit for me after the first third, but picks up again and continues to be great throughout.
Yeah, as much as I love Count Monte Christo as a story, being it a movie (https://youtu.be/qesn8pV9yu8?si=ssccZfQGf9F1fCk3), series (https://youtu.be/bF1Z7irZLdY?si=oDF0OnB-1NWVfwZq) or anime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:_The_Count_of_Monte...), the book gets so slow after first third that I have never actually read it through till the end.
Its a pity that we can have new cuts of movies (Zack Snyders Justice League vs original one) but we will never get George R. R. Martin version of Count of Monte Cristo.
The imagery of the movie has a definitive "Batman" vibe - sort of "full circle", even though, apparently CoMC was not _really_ an inspiration for the Dark Knight, as the legend went. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo_(202...
[2] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/254769/was-batman-...
The trailer looks a bit generic and definitely has a bit different vibe than Im used to (me not knowing French does not help at all :) ). Also the Count after transformation seems to have a different style - feels not as distinguished as old school actors in previous movies. But maybe it will be exactly what this story needs.
Anyway I will check it out.