Mini Reviews: The Black Count, Goodbye Mr. Chips and The North Star

The Black Count

Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

by Tom Reiss

★★★☆

This is a nonfiction account of the life of Alexandre Dumas’ father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. His wild, adventurous life gave his famous author son plenty of fodder for his novels. Reiss was the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for this book and the attention to detail is clear from the first page.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Thomas’ race. He was a black man in the midst of a country struggling with race relations and yet he managed to rise to a position of power and respect in the military. “…he remains the highest-ranking person of color of all time in a continental European army” according to his Wikipedia page.

His life is fascinating, but the book itself got caught up in some of the minutia of French history. The best parts are the ones dealing directly with Dumas’ life and impact on those around him. His son idolized him and modeled many of the scenes in his books on events in his father’s life.

I would highly recommend waiting to read this one until you’ve read both The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Going into it with knowledge of those novels increases your appreciation for the man who inspired some of those stories!

BOTTOM LINE: Detail-heavy, but still interesting. The book moves slowly, but certainly added to my appreciation of the books written by the subject’s son.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

by James Hilton

★★★☆

This sweet story follows the life of a devoted school master from the beginning of his career until the end. It’s a very short book, so there’s not too much room for character development. I wish I’d gotten to know a couple of the characters better. I actually saw the 1939 film before reading the book and this is one of the rare cases where I actually liked the movie better. Still I enjoyed this one and I particularly loved Mrs. Chips' role in the story.

BOTTOM LINE: A good little book about the impact one man can have on his students. A quick read and definitely worth the time.

The North Star

by Peter Reynolds

★★★

A sweet children’s book about finding your way in the world. It reminded me a bit of Alice in Wonderland, following a rabbit and a cat that appears to help you along your way. It’s nothing earth shattering, but the illustrations are well done and the message is good. Everyone is on a journey, though those journeys are all different.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2013 Wrap-Up

Each year Sarah Reads Too Much hosts the Back to the Classics Challenge. I need very little prodding to read classics, but I always participate in this one because I love the categories she comes up with! I completed the challenge and below are my books with links to each review. I earned three entries by finishing all six main categories and the six optional categories.

I read some really fascinating books for this challenge. I encountered Hemingway in the unexpected gender-bender The Garden of Eden and comtemplated solitude with Thoreau in Walden. I considered the morality debates in The Brothers Karamozov and the impact of societal expectations in Native Son. It really was a wonderful collection of books!

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Sarah for hosting this. It’s a lot of work to coordinate something like this. She even has individual pages for each category to link up, etc. I’m a list maker, so I love being able to check these off my list as I go through the year. Thank you Sarah!

THE CATEGORIES

The Required Categories:

A 19th Century Classic – Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)

A 20th Century Classic – The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

A Pre-18th or 18th Century Classic – Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

A Classic relating to the African-American Experience – Native Son by Richard Wright

A Classic Adventure – Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
A Classic that features an Animal – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

Optional Categories:

Re-read a Classic – Persuasion by Jane Austen
A Russian Classic – The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

A Classic Non-Fiction title – Walden by Hendy David Thoreau
Classic Children's/Young Adult title – Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Classic Short Stories – A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers 

by Alexandre Dumas

★★★★

So based on my experience with half a dozen movie versions of this book, I assumed the Cardinal was the big baddie and the story was mainly about the three musketeers. Reading it proved it to be a very different book. The Cardinal is certainly not the hero, but his role is more ambiguous than I expected. The true villain is actually the Lady DiWinter and oh my gosh, she is fantastic! I wish this book was called Don’t Mess with DiWinter. I have never encountered a more manipulative genius in literature! She’s a deadly version of Scarlett O’Hara. Everything she does is perfectly calculated. The book didn’t really click for me until she took center stage.

Honestly, I could have done without about half of the scenes with D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They are all great swashbuckling scenes, but their silliness is a bit exhausting. Aramis wants to be a priest, but he doesn’t really because he’s in love with a woman. Porthos is a preening fool who uses different women to fund his extravagant lifestyle. Athos, also known as emo boy, is moody and dramatic. Sure we soon learn why he is the way he is and it’s a great reason, but still the emo tendencies get a bit old.

D'Artagnan is the biggest goof of them all. When he isn’t challenging every man he meets to a duel, he’s falling in love with every woman he meets. Ironically the woman who he first falls for and who continues to love him is named Constance; her love is constant, while his certainly is not.

The book begins as D'Artagnan heads to Paris to join the king’s guard and become a musketeer. He meets three musketeers along the way, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and after a few misunderstandings the four become inseparable. The cocky quartet is constantly getting into trouble because of the unnecessary risks they take. At the same time they are pretty great at what they do and it’s fun to watch them duel their way out of every situation.

“I foresee plainly that if we don’t kill each other, I shall hereafter have much pleasure in your conversation.”

BOTTOM LINE: The Three Musketeers doesn’t have the same complexity and depth as The Count of Monte Cristo and so it’s not quite as satisfying. It is a really fun read and gives us some wonderful characters. Lady DiWinter is certainly one that I’ll never forget. I’m looking forward to reading some of the other books in the D'Artagnan series.

“It was one of those events which decide the life of a man; it was a choice between the king and the cardinal.”

“He gave a sigh for that unaccountable destiny which leads men to destroy each other for the interests of people who are strangers to them and who often do not even know that they exist.”