A New t3h Update!

Yay! I'm back from the weekend, which was fun. My mom, dad, twin sister, and a schoolmate who's staying with us all went out to a hotel in in the central-eastern part of the country, which was designed to be like a ranch-house. It was pretty nice, I have to admit.

Even though we were only there for two days, the 'vacation', such as it was, was nice. Technically, though, I did schoolwork the whole time. While my mom, sister, and the schoolmate went horseback riding, and while my dad slept or whatnot, I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, which was great. It was really, really great. It took me a lot longer to read than I thought it would, though. It had a total of 875 pages, and since I was already on page 130 when we started the trip, I should have been done by the end of the day, by all rights. However, it was actually the next day that I finished, though it was waaay better than I thought it was going to be.

I ♥ the character of Edmond Dantès. He's a seriously cool protagonist, and Dumas' portrayal of the emotional conflicts of Dantès is incredible. He goes from being a caring and somewhat naive person to being a despairing and hate-filled person, to being a vengeful and caring person, to being a remorseful and caring person, to being a happy person. I much enjoyed it. I saw the movie a while ago, and I read an abridge version, but I found out while I read the unabridged version that the abridged version really left out around 6/8ths of the bok, while the movie changed the plot considerably, thus knocking around 11 years out of the story.

Normally, I tend to severely dislike books that have been titled as classics, with the exception of The Lord of the Rings, which I don't really consider to be a classic anyway, since it was published in the last 100 years. Anyway, the only 'Classic' author that I had liked until now was Sir Walter Scott, thanks to Ivanhoe. Now, however, I like Alexandre Dumas as well, and I could almost think that his style influenced Tolkien--the similarities are definitely there.

The book didn't end nearly in the way I had thought it was going to--it's been something like seven years since I read the abridged version, so I had quite forgotten the ending, and the movie version ends differently.

I had thought that Edmond would wreak his revenge on Fernand, Danglars, and Villeforte. However, I also thought that he would get Mercédès back, as well. I was wrong. It made the book much more interesting, though, and I really liked the twist.

I found out that it was inspired by the true story of a shoemaker named Pierre Picaud, who was falsely accused of being a spy for England by four jealous friends before he was married (but after his engagement). He was imprisoned for seven years, during which time a fellow prisoner told him about a hidden treasure. When Picaud got out of prison, he found the treasure, returned to Paris, and spent the next ten years plotting his successful revenge against his friends. w00t for him.

It was an awesome story. I much liked it.

Also, while we were at the Ranč pod Ostrou Skala (the name of the hotel), we purchased several AWESOME Kofola glasses. We got five 4 dcl glasses (mugs, really. They're awesome), and two 3 dcl glasses of two different styles. I love them. ^_^