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The Count of Monte Cristo
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June and July Book - The Count of Monte Cristo
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Christa VG
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May 23, 2012 12:59PM
We haven't picked our June book yet, but I thought I would start the thread because I want to, but also to let people know the poll is up for what book we should read in June. Go and vote on it and this thread will soon have a name :d
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Down at the bottom of the group, or you can click on the little side bar at the right hand side of your screen that says "Polls".
LOL I found it. There are days if I had a brain I'd be dangerous :D
I was going to vote, but I can't make out the names of the books. Any chance of listing them?
Peter wrote: "I was going to vote, but I can't make out the names of the books. Any chance of listing them?"If you click on show results you'll be able to see the names by hovering the arrow over the titles.
Thanks for the info Cindy. I'll get voting.
Peter wrote: "I was going to vote, but I can't make out the names of the books. Any chance of listing them?"Ahhh I never thought of that, I will redo the poll and keep that in mind the next time I make one. Thanks for the feed back.
We have our book! The Count of Monte Cristo it is! The rules for the book of the month is just read it if you can. You don't have to finish by the end of the month and you can post here even if it is no longer June. If you do finish the book please post your reviews here.Have fun and I look forward to what you think of it. I am about half way through it right now and think I can finish it before the end of June.
You started already? shame shame shame LOL - I hated to start any of them till I knew for sure. But now, the Count it is.
It's good that I can still comment on the book later :P (a couple months ago one of my friends and I decided that we'd both try to start and finish Monte Cristo in July)...I will definitely say what I think of the book once I'm done though :)
I'm reading it in french. 50/800 pages through and I already like it.
that's a lot of book for one month's reading, I started it many moons ago and life, the universe and everything else got in the way, so seems as good a time as any to get back into it :)
I read The Count of Monte Cristo some years ago. I'll wait until those who are reading it are finished, or at least until the end of June to write about it, in case I inadvertently spoil it for those who are reading it. Suffice it to say for now that I enjoyed it a lot, and I hope those who are working their way through it do too. It's a long read, but worth it.
Hi, this is my first post in this group!I happen to be reading The Count of Monte Cristo anyway. I've been meaning to for years and I finally put it on my yearly TBR Challenge list back in January.
I'm a little more than halfway through (page 650!) and am really enjoying it. I actually teach English to Japanese university students, and I often take my current read to class to show them and make them ask me questions about it. It was hilarious to watch their eyes bug out when I told them it was 1200 pages but not boring! I don't think most of them would tackle such a chunkster even in their native language.
Yea!!!!!! I love this story though I have yet to read the book. Excited!
The length of any book depends on what edition you get. Many editions of long books like this are abridged, whether for financial or artistic reasons, but I always read unabridged editions. Sometimes these books (and Victor Hugo is particularly notable for this) will contain long passages containing descriptions of the place in which the characters are set, or the social situations pertaining at the time. You can often skip these large chunks of text without your enjoyment or understanding of the story being impaired, but I always think that if the writer went to the bother of putting these bits in we should try to read them, and they can often be quite entertaining and can deepen our understanding of the behaviour and motivation of the characters.
It's already downloaded and I'll start today. I only have 75 more books to read for reviews, plus starting my 15-hour courseload for university. Piece of cake LOL
disclosure *i have never read a book with so many pages* It will be a challenge. Lifelist, bucketlist ??!!??
Peter wrote: "The length of any book depends on what edition you get. Many editions of long books like this are abridged, whether for financial or artistic reasons, but I always read unabridged editions. Sometim..."I agree! I have mistakenly bought abridged copies of books before and by the time I got around to reading them and noticed it was way too late to exchange it for a 'proper' edition, so I had to go to the used book store and try to get some credit from it!
The Count has been on my to-read list for a long time, but I'm already in the midst of a few books and I'm a slower reader anyway, so there is no way I'd finish before the end of June. I'm glad to know that we can still post about it beyond though!
I read it back in December and finished sometime in January. Very good romantic story. Unfortunately, I read an abridged version. I didn't realize it until I was nearly a hundred pages into. I couldn't find another version in my library so I was stuck with it. Still good though. Did a lot of research though and was able to figure out what parts of the story I was missing.
Dumas is often abridged. Also, since he didn't write in English, we are always reading translations, of varying age and quality.However, MONTE CHRISTO is one of the great adventure novels of all time!
I, too, had an abridged edition but got rid of it once I realized.Dumas does tend to go on, but he put everything in there for a reason so I wanted the full version.
I do find myself skimming now and then, but most of the scen-setting and historial detail is really interesting to me.
Bought a copy today, never previously read it. Looks like a fine choice though!
I've watched the modern version of the movie "The Count of Monte Cristo" and I read about half the book during college, but then college caught up to me and my free reading time disappeared XD I'm really excited to have a reason to pick it up again.
Sara wrote: "You started already? shame shame shame LOL - I hated to start any of them till I knew for sure. But now, the Count it is."I started it two months ago actually :D I am still trying to find all the time I need to finish it, but first I have to finish the May book, I know I'm a hypercritical mod.
My copy has 1056 pages. Yikes! Comes out to roughly 35 pages a day if I take table of contents and end notes out of the equation. I haven't had assigned reading pages since college, so this is weirdly exciting. I'm not confident I will finish this in one month, as most of my reading time is before bed, but I will give it a shot. @Erin, I've noticed the dramatic dialogue too... I think it was just de rigueur. Makes it kind of fun though, especially if you assign them an overly french accent while you're reading. :)
This book is really long, if you like we it can be our June and July book, especially because those two months are pretty crazy for most people. I'll set up a poll at near the middle of June and we can decide then.
I think the dramatic dialogue is just part of the era. I liked that about it actually. I thought it made it fun to read.I read the abridged version of this book a while ago, and I honestly don't think I would have noticed there were things missing in my copy if I didn't know it was abridged. It was seamlessly done. I have a tendency to skip over drawn-out descriptions as it is, so not having to worry to much about those was great and it didn't take away from the story. I love the movie and watched that long before I read the book, so I do have to say I like it more. I just love the things done in the movie, even though they were done differently than the book intended. However, the book is still wonderful.
No offense intended but I have never understood why people avoid long books. If it's a good story, with engaging characters and clever dialogue and (in this case) interesting historical details, I would be disappointed if it ended too soon.Is it just the Age of Twitter, or were we all forced to read boring stuff in school? I do empathize with the latter. I still shudder when I think of Moby Dick ...yikes, that was torture and as a teacher, I would never ever ever make my students read it.
I read the book and Loved it!!! Edmund Dantes is one of my favorite fictional characters!
I avoid 1000 page books because I have so much to do and so many other things to read. And if the story isn't diminished by reading a version a couple hundred pages shorter, then I see no reason to muddle through the extra description. I'm not saying long books are bad, and I don't think everyone should rush out and only read abridged version, but with everything else I think the shorter version was a better choice for me.
From a personal level, I enjoy nice "fat" books. Since I'm now a publisher, reviewer, and still a student, more pages means more pages. I have to look at my time considerations. Pleasure reading is becoming a "sometimes" thing. Taking on a couple of books clubs (this one and 2 others) means that is book reading that isn't connected to either education or career. But ... does that mean I won't hop to it? NOooooo - Call me a glutton :)
Sometimes reading a book out loud, well, maybe not for the entire 1000 pages, but then again, why not, helps a reader grasp the beauty of the language of the culture or time the book comes from. I read this book a few years ago, and enjoyed it. I didn't even notice it was long! That means I must have had time on my hands at that point in my life. Honestly, Moby Dick seemed much, much longer...perhaps there's a formula for relating the action and high emotion of a piece to the number of pages of the book to give us a silly but scientific pigeonhole score for the books that we read. Or has someone already done that?
Again about the language: it can be a smooth and exotic flavor to sample the way other cultures frame their sentences. It does take some getting used to. One thing I enjoy about a book is coming across those phrases and sentences that make me back up and read them again, to savor them before I move on. Does this work for anyone else? Or does it make you too ware of the author? In whatever translation of The Count that I read, I wasn't aware of the author, just the art. That must have been a good translation.
I don't have much reading time these days, either, but it doesn't bother me if a book takes me a couple months to finish, especially a good read like this one. So fine, I am behind on my challenges. It's OK, I'll catch up with a couple short ones after.
Just finished Dickens' Bleak House (750 pages) so 1000 pages is not as scary as it was a month ago :) I hope I'm going to like this book!
I haven't started reading yet as I'm trying to finish up a couple that are ongoing (hopefully today). And, today I start my new semester, so balance will be iffy for the next few weeks LOLOn the other hand - I fully expect to become maniacal muahahaha
Gaijinmama wrote: "No offense intended but I have never understood why people avoid long books. If it's a good story, with engaging characters and clever dialogue and (in this case) interesting historical details, I ..."I'm not sure most people avoid long books, it's probably more likely that they avoid long books with a deadline, heh.
Lora wrote: "Sometimes reading a book out loud, well, maybe not for the entire 1000 pages, but then again, why not, helps a reader grasp the beauty of the language of the culture or time the book comes from. I..."
Love this point. This book in particular, when read out loud, makes me think of the March sisters' dramatic endeavors in Little Women. The language is just as lovely to hear as it is to read, and hearing it provides a different level to the experience of the text.
I just started reading the book, and I was very surprised by the introduction. It started off with the statement that this book is often categorized as a children's book. I've never read the book before, but I have seen a couple of adaptations. I don't think I would classify it that way. Would any of you think so?
If anyone wants to get an e copy it is available here Gutenberg.org as a free file for a selection of e formats :)Niall
I really didn't notice how long the book was when I started reading it, I just thought "Hey if it is too boring I'll stop reading it". But so far it is soo good. I think I will be sad when it ends even though it is so long. When I am reading it all I can think about in the page I am reading I am not even looking a head at how much more I have to go.
Glad to have a reason to start this again. I bought it last year for a dollar on my e-reader and started reading it about a month after I bought it. I really liked the story, but then the school year (I'm in high school) came around and I was just too busy, so I put it on pause. Now I have plenty of time to read and finishing it in a month should be no problem, despite the length. As for lengthy books, I think it depends on how interesting the length is. If I'm reading a thousand pages of The Worst Book Ever, then I hate a long book. If the writing is intrigueing and compelling, then I like a long book. :)
I was a bit surprised when I realized how long it was. However, when I told my teenage daughter I was going to read it, she said, "Oh, that's a good book!" (This comment coming from a teen who likes to read only if there is nothing else to do.) So, if she can read 1000+ pages, I certainly can!Elissa--I got mine for a dollar too, and after I bought it, my daughter said she had a copy of it. It will be much easier to read on the e-reader though, so I don't regret buying it.
I just finished CH 30 which I couldn't put down, let alone breathe.
It is so sad in the beginning, I almost wanted to cry. So unfair!
I have the Oxford World's Classics Edition. Does anyone know if that's an abridged version? I don't see that it says abridged anywhere, but I really want to make sure I'm reading the full version. I've been meaning to read this for such a long time, I just hope it doesn't take forever since I have so many other books I need to read at the moment!
If in the front matter (along with the copyright notice and so forth) it doesn't say "abridged" then it isn't. I believe that they are legally obliged to say if it is abridged.
I'm just guessing here, but if it is Oxford World Classic, it most likely is not abridged.
You can check the page numbers and that'll usually tell you - this book should be over 1000 pages. Most of the abridged are between 600-800. :)
