The Three Musketeers

I just finished reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.  Occasionally, I get in my mind that I should read some famous book or another.  Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.  (Robinson Crusoe, I'm looking at you.)  The Three Musketeers barely worked out.

I'd like to dedicate this book review to Shannon, who dutifully kept renewing the book at the library as I made my way through.  It turns out there is a limit to how many times you can do that, though, and we hit that limit.  So we took the book back, but since the girls are at the library multiple times a week (because, you know, Julia's read 267 books so far this year) they checked out the same copy a few days later.  I can promise that no one else in St. Charles has read The Three Musketeers this summer.

The thing is, I liked the book.  I didn't want to give up on it, but at the same time, I didn't want to read it enough to chose reading it over things like checking facebook on my phone.  So, that's about as hearty of a recommend as I can give.

I went into the book not knowing much about it.  Sadly, there isn't a girly looking guy who spends the whole book shrieking "D'Artagnan!"  Apparently Disney can only get you so far in life.  The book can be quite silly at times, which I didn't expect.  At one point D'Artagnan receives 4 excellent horses and gives one to his friends, Athos, Porthos and Aramis.  Within 24 hours, they have each managed to sell, gamble or eat the horses, but each manages to keep the saddle.  They have an extremely happy-go-lucky outlook on life as they race around Paris dueling and plotting.

Unfortunately, I just never got all that "in" to the story.  Perhaps if the book didn't have to reach across 170 years and a translation to get to me it would have had a better chance.  I wish I could have mustered more excitement for it, but both in reading it and reviewing it it gets a good, hearty, "meh".