So, to take that back to the discussion of canon, what makes it okay to say "No thanks, I don't like fantasy" and not okay to say "No thanks, I don't like whaling?" Why is one percieved as an expression of individual taste and the other percieved as a hostile attack on intellectualism?

Jessica, I wouldn't quarrel with anyone who didn't read MD for that reason. Life is too short to read everything, and everyone has to have criteria for what they will and won't read. But the non-fan of whaling shouldn't look down the nose at someone who loved MD.

Nutty, I read the unabridged CMC just last year. Wonderful, sprawling story of the type I'm a sucker for. And much of it is extremely vivid. But I can't remember the ending for the life of me.

I like that one too. The language is beautiful.

Huh. I don't recall the language; I'll take a look at my copy when I get home. But if we're talking beautiful language, I go with Lolita. Which does get a bit weird in the last hundred pages, but man. Oh, the last paragraph nearly made me cry.

I like that one too. The language is beautiful

Yes. It's so serene and wistful.

Ooh, I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo right now and enjoying it immensely. Debating over reading Nutty's whitefont, but I think I'll come back to it once I've finished the book.

Okay, Monte Cristo. Whitefont for the innocent:

Damn. Now I want a sandwich.

Oh, gosh, we've got to whitefont?

connie, for my part, I don't much care if you do, as it's not hard for me to skip on by (and I may be the only one currently reading it).

But the non-fan of whaling shouldn't look down the nose at someone who loved MD.

Has that happened here, though? It seemed to me to be mostly the other way around.

(I was directing these questions/comments at the whole thread, BTW, not trying to pick on Fred Pete. I'm genuinely curious.)

The unabridged Count, to my mind, is the only way to go. M. Nortier, that conniving revolutionary, gets short shrift in the abridgements, and he's my favorite character. All my commentary is based on the unabridged.

t trying to be obscure Yes, the Count does shift a great deal in the two halfs. I don't think any of the second half is even in his POV, he exists mostly as a Deux Ex Machina with a nasty, bitter streak. I've tried to re-read it many a time, but I always bog down in the second half, to my shame. I find myself skipping to the parts about the Next Generation.

The end of Monte Cristo, for thems as forgot:

Morcerf kills himself, and Mercedes retires to Marseilles to live as an unhappy widow. Albert joins the army. The prosecutor whose name I spaced realizes his wife is a murderer (faked death of Mlle. Wossname here), and "encourages" her to kill herself so he won't suffer the shame of arresting her. She kills herself, and her little boy, and Prosecutor Guy goes mad. Danglars flees to Rome with the last of his $$, and Luigi Vampa the gangster kidnaps him and makes him pay like 500 fr. a day for bread, till there is no money left, and then lets him go. (All at the Count's instigation.)

Then, Count finally reveals to a suicidal Young Morrel that Mlle. Wossname is not actually dead; that he and paralyzed Grandfather Noirtier conspired to fake it in order to out the mother as a murderer, and wow now that we have rendered Mlle. Wossname totally void if identity, how about you all run off happily into the sunset! Also, Count + Haydee the Persian child/slave/ward, which is a development that comes in on page 1100, is completed at page 1400, and feels like the author suddenly changed his mind and couldn't bear to leave the Count without some nooky at the end. And ICKY.