Books 2014: The Count of Monte Cristo


The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is one of my all-time favorite books. This is the story about a young man with a promising future who was naive enough to fall into a political intrigue and unfortunate enough to have those around him that would use that to destroy his future.



Okay, I love this book. First, I love Edmund Dantes. He is a great character that manages to hold hate, anger, and revenge in his heart for nearly 25 years but still comes out the other side capable of feeling love, compassion, guilt, and mercy for those around him. One of the reasons I like this character so much is that he starts out for all the wrong reasons but he still manages to stumble his way into something that isn’t terrible and he learns that even if he felt justified in what he did that it didn’t make his life better or make him happy. He doesn’t get a happily ever after because he brought “justice” to those that wronged him. He does learn that he has a chance to build a happy and fulfilling life but that can only happen if he ends his mission and finds a new purpose, a new direction.

In addition to how much I enjoy Edmund’s journey, I also find the story and the amount of detail included to be amazing. I love that you don’t get all of the information at once, I love that there are layers of characters (most of which go by more than one name/title), and I love the rich descriptions of the surroundings, buildings, people, etc. This is truly a story where you can see the people and places. This is a long book, but in my opinion it is worth every page and a book that everyone should read at least once.

To finish, this is my second time reading this book. I don’t do this often because there are so many books on my list of books to read that taking time out to revisit only happens for something I really love. This time around I was short on time so I opted to listen to an audio recording (an unabridged version read by John Lee). I listened to this one because it was unabridged and it was free on my public libraries website for me to listen too. I just streamed it while I was doing other things around the house.

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