Bienvenue à Marseille | 2025 The Count of Monte Christo, read-a-long

[AgualusasLover]

Following the success of the continuing Dickensalongs, Fallen Women and various other classics, please join The Count of Monte Christo read-a-long, kicking off on 1 January 2025.

The ultimate tale of revenge, with swashbuckling, chicanery and bare faced lies - The Count of Monte Christo has it all.

Editions: most important point is an unabridged version, coming in at just over 1,200 pages. This thread discusses the various translations – the Penguin Classics, trans by Robin Buss is very popular and the one I am reading but what you have already is likely fine and the nuances of translation are always fun to discuss.

What’s the best translation of The Count of Monte Cristo? • We Love Translations

I’ve been thinking about the best way to read-a-long. There have been red-alongs by the day, in chunks and every which way.

I think we have two options:

There are 118 chapter and my proposal is we do one a day, starting on 1 January, 2025. (W&P and all the Fallen Women books worked well this way)

We could also convene weekly e.g. no spoilers until Sunday and read it as it was released, in 18 parts c.65 pages per week. (I remember The Woman in White worked well this way and so do the Dickensalongs)

For now, I have assumed a chapter a day as it has served us well so far, if the majority strongly object, I have put placeholders in my copy breaking it down and can update in readiness for January.

Schmoop very handily has chapter by chapter breakdowns. Here is the Intro https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/count-of-monte-cristo/

MN meet up in Marseille 2025!

Sorry @EineReiseDurchDieZeit 😄
Perhaps I should have kept that to myself! To be fair though, we have got to 30 odd chapters and so far it has been skipping along nicely. Hope it keeps up like this 🤞

Thanks everyone and sorry for getting mixed up @Orland0 , you were right! The 10-year jump has totally confused me 😂

89 pages? Bloody hell!

Eeek I went on holiday for a week and forgot to read The Count for a few days. Thought I'd catch up tonight (rock n roll Saturdays here!) and am quite weirded out by the drugs!

Thanks for the help with the time jump as I had missed that. And I'm with everyone else, the casualness of wanting a dumb servant shocked me. Feels out of character.

Happy to take a few more days over the next few big chapters. I'll keep checking in to make sure I don't get too behind again!

My Penguin Classics Robin Buss translation has Sunday's Chapter 33 Roman Bandits as 24 pages so fine for a weekend.

That sounds a lot more reasonable!

What a fascinating article @cassandre - thank you for the link :)

Things have definitely taken a darker turn for sure. I've read a little ahead as I've got a busy week coming up, & interested to hear what others make of the next couple of chapters.

Albert appears to be quite wealthy but I might have read that wrong. I got that impression from the way he thinks he’ll be able to spend and get the horse etc he wants.
But that would make more sense if he was Danglars’ son as we know Danglars was rich. I can’t see how Fernand is that wealthy. Having said that, even as I type there was a reference to Fernand being employed somewhere and earning well, wasn’t there, or have I misremembered that?

I also totally didn’t spot the time jump.

Danglars was a banker who became very rich during the war with Spain, and Fernand became a soldier of fortune, was awarded a title for his services then came back very rich from the war between Greece and Turkey.

Albert looks like he will get through the fortune his father acquired quite quickly.

This is another very odd chapter with this long, long story, whose only purpose seems to be to dissuade the young men from not taking a dangerous route, and in which 'Sinbad the sailor' gets a passing mention!

I wondered if Dumas's publisher 5old him the story was dragging a bit and needed a bit more adventure and violence.

Chapter 33 Summary

Roman Bandits

• Franz and Albert are a little disheartened by their lack of good planning.
• At their hotel, the hotel owner warns them about bandits.
• Franz and Albert have a look on their faces like, "yeah, right, whatever dude."
• And so the hotel owner tells them a story about a bandit named Luigi Vampa. Here begins the hotel owner's story:
• Luigi Vampa was a peaceful shepherd in the Italian countryside. He liked long walks on the beach, piña coladas, shooting, oh, and a foxy lady named Teresa.
• The big cheese of bandits (a dude named Cucumetto) ran into Luigi and Teresa one day. He happened to be running away from the cops, and so Luigi and Teresa give him a place to hide.

I think Shmoop is taking short cuts again!
That was okay. A bit meandering and long-winded. Was the point of the chapter to infuse the story with local flavour, I wonder. Or is Luigi Vampa going to make an appearance?

I also enjoyed the article that cassandre posted. Fascinating.

If we have two particularly long chapters coming up, we could take the week? But I am behind so will go with whatever is decided.

I don't mind taking the week. We have covered a lot of ground in the book already. Happy to go with the flow.

I'm going to need the week to do these two chapters I think

I've got a lot on this week, so very happy to have a bit longer

I've got a lot on this week, so very happy to have a bit longer

Hello, I fell behind so have just caught up. Definitely found the last few chapters quite the departure (and a bit of a slog at times). I wouldn’t have picked up on who the characters are if not for this thread so thank you all!

It seems crazy to me how Fernand has risen so far, given the impression he gave at the beginning of the book.

In terms of pacing, also happy to go with the flow.

Yes, MonOncle. He got lucky. Right place at the right time perhaps?

He was a player. Just before Waterloo he deserted Napoleon to go over to the English, but in a way that he could still go back if Napoleon won.

I admit, it never felt like he would be capable of all this manoeuvring when we first meet him - although he was very happy to dob in Edmond, it wasn't that sophisticated.

I am very much enjoying these chapters but I had expected a bit more actual revenging.

Shall we say reconvene at the weekend then?

Posts restricted to clarification points but with all of us aware that whilst we will all try not spoiler a question or an answer might inadvertently be a spoiler (would expect only tiny given how much we have left to go)?

From Saturday morning, free for all and we can look ahead and see how we feel about the next lot.

So chapters 34-35 inclusive

That's fine 👍

Thanks that sounds good. I’ve just realised that my audio and print get out of step here (I’ve been doing well at following it by audio until this point but now need to revert to the text for a bit)! So my audio has one chapter ‘Roman Bandits’ that the print divides into 2 (‘Roman Bandits’ and ‘Vampa’). So the next chapter ‘The Colosseum’ is numbered 34 in one and 35 in the other! So are we aiming to get to the end of ‘Colosseum’ for the weekend?

I dozed off about 10 minutes into ‘Roman Bandits’ this morning, while the hotel owner was waffling on about… something or other.

I’m pretty sure Shmoop has split into 2 chapters what my audio version has as one long one, so there may be other variations between texts here. I’m a bit disappointed that Edmond seems to have spent 10 years neglecting revenge, swanning about building palaces and getting high. What happened to all that ‘God of Vengeance’ stuff?! Presumably playing the long game 🤔

I’m happy with a week on the 2 chapters, as I think it’s going to require me girding my loins to get my focus into this new section of the book, and work will be full on too.