Tag: art

The Count of Monte Cristo

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Part 3

The Chateau de Monte-Cristo is the current home of the Dumas society. It is a Neo Renaissance building decorated in floral, angelic, and music motifs with a sculpture of a historical writer above each ground floor window.
A second building, a Neo Gothic pavilion commissioned as a writing studio by Dumas is comically named Chateau D’If.
The property includes multiple gardens. The Chateaux was designed by Hippolyte Durand and construction took place between 1844-47.
Though it cost him 500,000 Francs, in 1848 Dumas sold the entire property he’d just commissioned for only 31,000 after being brought to near financial ruin.
The property that Monte Cristo bought was so briefly lived in by the writer that other owners could claim more right to it than he could. It has been a private property, a school, after it fell into disrepair the owners attempted to reconvert it into 400 flats in the 1960s before the Chateaux were rescued by the Dumas society.
The Dumas society (Société des Amis d’Alexandre Dumas) was formed in 1971 to preserve the Chateau and Dumas’ legacy by collecting books, manuscripts, autographs, photographs and contributing to cultural activities within the Chateau. It’s currently operated by the society as a museum.


The Chateau de Monte-Cristo
Chateau d’If

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.

Fuck off 2023!

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If you aren’t aware, earlier this year I started a youtube channel (@danymadethis) about writing research! I’m going to start featuring corresponding blog posts to go with the video essays that update once a month; with a ton of short video crap in between to let you know what drain my brain is meandering around.

There’s also a threadless shop! danymadethis.threadless.com full of random art prints you can put on stuff!

Here is my 2023 recap for favorite reads: https://youtu.be/jFlPNb7DWDY

Starting out 2024 I plan to review short stories for January to ease you into good reading habits for the new year 😉

2023 was a terrible year, and I had thought 2022 was bad. I am glad to tell it to fuck off

I hope it treated everyone else better, and that 2024 is a drastic improvement

Review: The Six Deaths of the Saint

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The Six Deaths of the Saint
Alix E Harrow

A copy paste ! :There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.

These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon

Okay, back to review:

*Vomit, scream, fall over in vomit*
It’s perfect.
Professional start, no?

I absolutely adored this story. It checked every mark for me: time travel, time loop, deal with the devil, character development by progressing through trauma, sacrifice motif, clear evil, unclear anachronistic time period. The tone and voice of the story was so clear and strong immediately, the narrative wasting no time to establish the character outside of anything other than a force to be reckoned with through the motif of willpower.
I have recommended this short story to so many people at this point that even at 29 pages I’m willing to offer it up as one of my contenders for my favorite book I’ve read this year.
It is beautiful, the wording and flow of sentences purposeful and well sculpted.
No notes.