It's time for me to tackle this monstrous book. I've heard very good things about it from people at work and I enjoyed the movie as well. It's 1000 pages long.... yikes! Anyone up for the challenge?

I'll be reading the Penguin edition (of course) - the Robin Buss translation.

This has got to be one of the easiest to read and most enjoyable fiction books I've ever read. Has anyone else read it?

I'm finished reading the Count of Monte Cristo. Although I can't put this book alongside the best fiction books I've ever read it still is extremely good. It's on par with Balzac and Flaubert but Dumas' story fills so many more pages and pages that are so, so, so easy to turn. This isn't a Russian author here. This is an artist that gives nearly every page the ability to draw some form of emotion from the reader or cause the reader to reflect and question their own morals and ideals and even their belief in god while keeping them entertained and completely drawn.

Dumas questions man's right to pass judgment on other men and more than that, he questions man's right to punish. It does so, anyway, for a 21st century reader, a reader who knows more about empathizing with his fellow man and who feels more equal to him than many men did when this book was written.

The Coup de Tat of his tormentors should have been followed by a Coup de Grace. It should have been a spectacle of triumphant magnitude so amazingly fulfilling to the reader that the beautiful pages already turned would pale in comparison. It should have been an explosion of glorious wrath and worthy of cheer so powerful and honest and fervent that no reader could help but be compelled to willingly or unwillingly put superhuman energy into. This was the only ending worthy of such a great story. But - this ending was merely mortal and kept a line between reality and fiction that made it braze perfection... for me anyway.

The finale to near perfection must be perfection.. but to someone other than me it may have been.