Book Review of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (or All Translations and Abridgements Are Not Created Equal)

For my most recent Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2009 for GoodReads, I chose a book I read many years ago and wanted to read again: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Being initially unable to find the old “family paperback version” I’d grown up with, I jaunted off to Barnes & Noble, where I picked up an inexpensive B&N edition that, even as an abridgement, was easily at least three times the length of the version that I had grown up with.

As a great lover of Dumas’ The Three M