Category: book reviews

The Count of Monte Cristo, again 

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Part 5 in what I had originally intended to be four parts 

The plot 

Or,

Edmond Dantes; If God didn’t want me to do this he’d have killed me by now

Who we are to analyze and revenge ourselves upon in this section:

Baron Danglars, a former junior officer to Edmond Dantes who masterminded the plan to have Dantes imprisoned.

Now, appropriately Danglars is the last of the major players to meet his end, and would have the most brutal end by Monte Cristo ‘s designs had Villefort not fucked the pooch *so badly*. I maintain that what happens to Villefort is insanely brutal, which Monte Cristo agrees with. Monte Cristo is so repulsed by how horridly the Villefort family is ruined he debates if he’s perhaps made some error in the insane, decades long revenge planning. So much so, he ultimately treats Danglars with mercy. Eventually.

So, what do we do with a problem like Danglars?

Danglars rises from cargo master working with Dantes to being a very successful banker, though he lies about how successful. Edmond begins by asking Danglars for unlimited credit, which both exposes his inability to do so despite his purchased barony and title, but also ultimately causes people to divest from Danglars, particularly because of a foreign policy scheme which Edmond manufactures by bribing a telegraph operator to give false information on political upheavals and advancements. Danglar’s business is slowly eroded and he ultimately has to flee Paris–we’ll get to that in a moment–and is captured by friend of the plot Vampa who causes Danglars to increasingly barter away the rest of his fortune for safety.

Now there’s another anti Danglars plot involving his daughter Eugenie–great news, she’s a lesbian.  Eugenie is supposed to marry Albert but Edmond barely has to convince them not to get married. Then Danglars tries to make her marry Andrea Cavalcanti–great news Cavalcanti is one of Edmond’s plants *but hold on we’ll get there in a minute*. Eugenie has the best ending of anyone in the book, she runs away with her girlfriend and assumes a male identity to become an artist. Good for him!

Now that Cavalcanti kid. Sit down for this one, it’s the longest con in the book. and it’s going to be our transition to the final piece: what happens to the Villefort family.

Madam Danglars, who sucks, years ago had an affair with Villefort. She gives birth to a boy, Villefort buries it alive and tells her it was stillborn. Berttucio, thinking he could make a buck on Villefort sees him burying a baby alive and goes and takes it, assuming that Villefort was hiding some sort of money or holdings. Berttucio then ends up raising the child of these two assholes who is tantamount to evil. One day he beats up, ties up, and robs his caretakers and ends up in prison where his cellmate his Caderousse, the guy who failed to stop the plot against Edmond in the first place who I don’t think I’ve even talked about yet. He’s small potatoes. This kid. So Edmond tracks down this kid who is plot poison and he pays him/gaslights him into playing the role of Andrea Cavalcanti as part of a two man con with this other guy that’s pretending to be Cavalcanti senior, all so they can get him to marry Eugene and rob Danglars.

It comes out in huge fashion who this kid really is and that’s the impetus for Eugenie getting out of dodge while the parents are distracted with fallout. Sorry  we almost married you to your brother, also what?

let’s try to tie it all up with the Villefort plot….

The Count of Monte Cristo

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Part 1

Come on a journey with me
The journey is Im reading The Count of Monte Cristo on a whim.
It is 1276 pages and I have absolutely zero free time between caregiving, writing, and content what have you.
So we’re making it content.
So, first obstacle;
I have had an extremely difficult time attempting to download a book on tape of this, allowing me to “read” count of monte Cristo while doing other stuff.



I recommend looking up librevox or loyalbooks for public domain recordings!
You can access them on their websites or I like to look for specific recordings that have been uploaded to podcast addict!


I attempted at one time a recording of Ulysses by James Joyce, which may be another journey we go on this year, but it is so impenetrable to read out loud that every recording I found included some laughter or groans, which honestly was so charming.

So anyhow, I got caught up on Chateau D’If. For whatever reason my phone refused to download this 55 hour audio book past chapter 8.

Weird, right?

So, I’ve gotten creative and been switching between audiobook options because almost every platform I’ve found has some issues with Count of Monte Cristo.

And because I most likely have some form of ADHD, I have zoned out and spent a lot of time researching Alexandre Dumas as an individual and let me tell you, he’s a guy.

I mean, he was a guy™.

So next week will be my rant on Alexandre Dumas and I’ve challenged myself that the week after that will be a take down of the Count himself.

We’re having a Dumas month!

Womp womp

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Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

I hadn’t read this since highschool. Hey, hey be honest with me, is it a bad sign my algorithms keep suggesting I read Kafka and Sylvia Plath?

So anyway, I reread it for shits and giggles and I wanted to let you know I neither shat nor giggled.

A lot of the things which happen in the story, I mean…do I have to tell you? He turns into a giant weird bug. He wakes up and is a bug. This could be interpreted as waking up as a young man to your role in society, a nod to religious persecution in some interpretations, or a more often a nod to the dehumanizing results of capitalism. Both are completely valid.

What I feel like people talk about less in the social osmosis are the reactions of the family to Gregor Samsa when he wakes up to this revelation. They all reject him. Some are nice than others, but it’s ultimately his father who leads to his death. And when he dies, they all leave and pretend he was never there, happier to be rid of him. A nod to whistleblowers being stomped out by the earlier generations for being too sensitive to harsh conditions? A nod to people not fitting into society’s norms and expectations being murdered by those closest to them to prevent being ostracized themselves? A nod to ….you get the idea. All of it. It’s all valid interpretations.

For real though, should I be worried this keeps coming up in my reading suggestions?

Review: Poor Things

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Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Obviously you would think I’ve seen the film. I haven’t. I want to. This is the sort of surreal book that lends itself well to art and design because there is both a sense of blank canvas in the characters and in the design, but what is not alterable is the setting and time. It makes the book unique in a lot of ways as the main character is, frankly, the world and Bella is absorbing information and character as she becomes integrated into it.

I enjoyed Bella’s assessments of the world, the eyes of an innocent frankly discussing the state of the world. I enjoyed also the multiple narratives contradicting one another as each character puts their light onto that world, influenced by how they have benefited in society.

This book is, genuinely, much more complex and sophisticated than I think even many movie goers would say the film is. Having not seen it yet, I’ll have to update you later.

In the meantime, however, read this book. It’s one of the first books I was truly able to sing my teeth into this year. It would easily be its own book to analyze it properly.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

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An analysis,

It’s not often I find something like this; specifically, a book I hadn’t heard of by an author I love. the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only fully completed novel by Edgar Allen Poe, someone I learned to do voicework by narrating. I’ve literally read, cover to cover, multiple compendiums but somehow this story slipped past me. It was only because of House of Usher on Netflix that I had heard of it and because I felt deeply compelled to figure out Mark Hamill’s character (who was my favorite).

The Pym story is odd for Poe because it doesn’t follow his normal tropes. I could probably make a key for Poe: dead wife, remarried; main character with high sensory perception, etc cetera. But the Pym story is a high seas novel in the vein of Treasure Island.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t surreal. It does have the trope of a man trapped in a confined space which he details, similar to Pit and the Pendulum, in the chapters in which Pym is a stowaway on a vessel then overtaken in a mutiny with no one aware he’s below deck. And there is, of course, the novel’s abrupt end which plays out a bit like M. Valdemar where the whole  narrative could Be taken for a hoax—the Pym narrative claims to only be transcribed by Poe.

No, what’s surreal and out of pocket for Poe about it is how he plays a straight face for most of the novel. Only toward the very end is there any supernatural happening, instead, much of the book could have been written by someone else.

It seems almost like a writing exercise.  Published in 1838, the Pym narrative covers shipwrecks, mutiny, cannibalism, hollow earth theory, and touches on the race for the poles– infamously leading to the deaths of many explorers. It seems to have been an obvious inspiration for The Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne fifty years later.

Review: A Thousand Ships

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A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes is a telling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the various women experiencing it–conspicuously neglecting Helen. It is instead a story of the many victims and heroes that are largely unsung because, as Haynes puts it, the majority of war stories should not be told about only one half of the people. The men of the story are not heroes; Odysseus is a cunning and conniving as he is in an honest reading of the Odyssey and Iliad, with frequent chapter breaks written as letters from Penelope to her wayward husband growing increasingly hostile. There are also frequent breaks spoken by the muse Calliope scolding the orator of the stories for trying to steer them towards the men and their usual paths, towards Helen who Calliope has no use for.

Instead the full fate of Cassandra is discussed, the full fate of Hecuba, Andromache, Polyxena, Laodamia, Iphigenia, and others. It made me realize I couldn’t remember how Cassandra had died and that was a portrayal which stuck out to me sharply for how compelling and well written it was.

Overall the story was cleverly crafted and an extremely fresh breath of air for the topic.

Review: The Lover

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The Lover
Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A novella at 42 pages, I had needed to get my hands on this as I adore Silvia Moreno-Garcia and, as you can imagine, I have a reading problem.
This is a wonderful fairy tale, absolutely perfect from start to finish; it’s just what I like in fantasy. The world building is rapid paced and engrossing, the characters likeable and believable, and the callbacks to fairytale story telling and monsters are seamless.

I feel I’ve been saying this a lot, but I look forward to seeing what is next from Moreno-Garcia

Review: Making It So

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Making it So
Sir Patrick Stewart

I’m back on my autobiography bullshit.
At 432 pages, it would seem Patrick Stewart has a few things to say about himself.
I’ll say up front what I didn’t care for and that’s the few times Sir Patrick jabs in to comment on his daughter not forgiving him for his affair which destroyed his first marriage. Perhaps betrayal trauma is just too close to me, but it felt cloying. He mentioned on several occasions not feeling close to his daughter and that it was his affair that drove in this wedge, but not particularly anything he’s done to try and repair it. Instead it’s a wistful ‘I’m old and going to die someday, hope she gets over how I treated her mom’.
That’s up front and there now. Perhaps he has made many efforts with his daughter and didn’t wish to betray her privacy, but those comments did stick in my craw.
Sir Patrick does a brilliant job of delicately planting in that, well, maybe he wasn’t always a nice guy. Maybe he wasn’t always the least aggressive man there is. But he talks at length about how these outbursts he has had, spells of immaturity or being a rude coworker, are something he fears, in review of how his father behaved and what trauma he witnessed. It’s something that when he recognizes it, he strives to stamp it out.
He doesn’t hold back and he appears to be honest, and on the edge of that same dime, he doesn’t linger on failings. He lingers on his own insecurities and imposter syndrome, that he still feels regret and humanity, true compassion for his younger self navigating his career, and he lingers most heavily on his career. It is extremely clear and true that he takes exceptional pride in his work and in the people he has inspired, taught, and touched by his portrayals. It is how he feels he can do the most good, express himself, and be known, and that is beautiful. And it’s sad, too, because it’s clear in his few passing but repeated comments, he hasn’t been able to connect to his daughter that way. And that schism clearly bothers him. He portrays great gratitude for those who he can inspire and be close with.
The most prevalent thing, other than his clear love of his work and reliance on it, is how youthful his narrative voice is. Sir Patrick Stewart, for lack of better explanation, does not write like a man in his 80s. There is little sense of reflection but instead a sense of forward motion. He’s far from done.

Review: Written in Bone

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Written in Bone
Sue Black

This is a horror story of a different kind.
While I was debating doing the Invisible Man or giving some hot take on Jekyll and Hyde, I’ve decided to go with Written In Bone to finish of this little horror month. It’s not a horror story, it’s also not adequately a true crime story, but rather information about the skeleton, piece by piece, interwoven with true crime experiences of the forensic anthropologist Sue Black.
If you have any interest in forensics, archeology, or anatomists then Sue Black is for many the definitive source. A fantastically intelligent woman with a remarkable career, she is also a careful writer who is able to bring much of the extremely dense medical information that she trades in to a general reading level.
I adored the case files she discussed, having very respectfully changed names were appropriate, as well as the better known cases which I was inspired to look further into.
Sue Black’s work in furthering anthropology is phenomenal, she truly feels like the quintessential expert on human anatomy.

Review: Evidence of the Affair

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Evidence of the Affair
Taylor Jenkins Reid

A final short story to ease you into the New Year, also available on Amazon Prime, at 88 pages this is a very quick read due to its epistolary style.
The story consists of letters sent back and forth between two couples; Carrie Allsop writes to David Mayer after determining that their respective spouses are cheating and in a relationship, asking if he has found any evidence to confirm. The story follows both correspondence between Carrie and David as they come to find emotional support in one another through betrayal trauma and the correspondence between their spouses in letters that Carrie and David have found.
This story is very bittersweet for me as it puts a very hopeful perspective on betrayal trauma, over coming betrayal through improving supports. That’s not always possible and makes the story feel like a fantasy. As someone who’s dealt with significant betrayal trauma and PTSD, it is a bit of an escapism. You cheer for Carrie and David as they self actualize and grow close to others, living in defiance of their relationships.