WWW Wednesday 9/3/2014

We’re starting to get rolling, and I’m starting to feel better about my reading choices and blogging abilities. I’m definitely back in the swing of things now. Here’s what’s up this week:

 

What are you currently reading?

Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas

 

What did you just finish reading?

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (It’s driving me mad that I haven’t finished that collection yet.)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling

Winter’s Tale by Mark Hellprin

Justine by Lawrence Durell

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The Three Musketeers

I started to write my WWW Wednesday post this morning, and realized that absolutely nothing had changed since last week. UGH. That just ticked me right off.

There’s nothing worse than a book that is taking way too long to come to a conclusion. Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers was just that book this week. I was so ready to start blogging again, and couldn’t get to the end!

This book was utterly ridiculous to me, which was very disappointing. I grew up with the legend of the Musketeers, and I am absolutely loving the BBC series, but I had never read the original story and figured it was about time I did. Now, I wish I hadn’t. I think this book must be were we Americans get our exaggerated stereotypes (see stereotypes…I don’t actually think this is true) of the French–constant adultery, snobbish about food and wine, and “SACREBLEU!” every two seconds.

I was expecting heroic duels and romance, more knighty type showings of chivalry like I find in my British novels from the same time period. But this was just a foolish, horribly written mess. And maybe it’s just Dumas. I don’t think I’ve read much French literature, so I don’t mean to discredit France and French literature as a whole here. I just really hated this book. The Musketeers were not dashing at all, they were kind of lazy, actually. They wanted to lay around eating chocolate breakfasts and beg wine from married women. And heaven forbid if someone gave them Anjou wine instead of Champagne, oh my goodness.

The only really interesting character was Milady de Winter, and she was just an absolute nutcase. She had about 12 different personalities, but because of Dumas’ terrible writing, it’s hard to tell if she’s a psychopath and she’s in control of herself, or if she has absolutely no idea what’s going on and is just trying to stay alive.

I really wanted to follow this up by reading Man in the Iron Mask…but I don’t think I could stand it. I loved that movie, but ugh. I think reading any more Dumas would just ruin it for me. I’ll just rent the movie again.