A few month's ago I started reading Three Musketeers again. I had forgotten how relentless and fast moving it is. Moving from one action set piece to the next from beginning to end. It is almost overpowering, literally had to catch my breadth before turning a page.
I had forgotten how it was when I had read it as a kid.
Actually, I listened to a dramatization of The Three Musketeers and I was struck by how _funny_ it is. The 4-way duel at the beginning is hilarious and Aramis' and Porthos' respective romantic escapades give great comic relief to what is otherwise an action packed adventure.
The Count of Monte Cristo is an investment, and the middle third drags, but it's necessary to set up the final third, which is so rewarding for the reader. It's the best tale of revenge and redemption I've ever read.
The Black Count
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count
Is there some part of it that was based on real people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loranga,_Masarin_och_Dartanjan...
d'Artagnan - real
Cardinal Richelieu - real
Queen Anne - real
Louis XIII - real
France - fictional
So, I immediately looked it up. There was a real d'Artagnan, he was kind of a big deal, so Dumas wrote some stories based on a fictionalized version of the real d'Artagnan.
Jack Sparrow and/vs/saves the 3 Musketeers.
Now this impulse to scour and loot humanity of its indigenous cultural sites is turned on the indigenous Europeans, by the same ruling class and their institutional "researchers", "scientists" and "adventurer" apparatchiks that also scoured and looted the reset of the world and stored it in their museums, e.g., Egyptian artifacts.
Is nothing sacred or "holy" anymore? Can nothing survive the self-important narcissism of "scientists" that must impose themselves on everyone against their will? Why are we allowing these types of "scientists" to just plunder and destroy the cultural artifacts and sites simply because they are curious and want to write self-important papers to advance their careers and standing?
It's literally grave robbery, only more pretentious because the "scientists" are creating "collections" in their institutions. This is the very same kind of "scientist" with no respect for humanity that created the scientific classification that created racist supremacism...for science, of course.
How would you feel about "scientists" digging up and grave robbing and filing away the bones of some African, Asian, or South American indigenous? Why should we accept it for European indigenous?
People complain about the fact that, e.g., the British did it for centuries, e.g., all over Egypt and Indian grave and cultural sites, yet people are fine with these people doing it to the European indigenous cultural sites apparently. How about we reject this kind of purging and sanitizing of the earth of indigenous culture everywhere or at least come up with some standard of restoring things once investigated. All these artifacts survived literal millennia, but most of them will not survive the pretentious self-important narcissism of "scientist" grave robbers.
