The only Dumas I've read is Count of Monte Cristo. I cherish my unabridged copy that was stolen for my from my old high school's library. Edmund Dantes (the Count) gets tiresome, but the rest of the characters are fascinating.

edit: Oh, and I've read Ivanhoe. the unabridged was a whole lot more interesting than the abridged I got in school. The Ivanhoe characters were a tad more three-dimensional than the Monte Cristo characters.

I haven't read the other stories by either of them.

Nutty- I responded it movies, but I generally find I can't read Dumas or Scott. Especially Scott. I think because of the generally floweryness and density. Same thing with Henry James, actually. I must have tried to read Portrait of a Lady 15 billion times. I am not sure why, as I can read Thomas Hardy, who many people find really tough going.

I have read Monte Cristo, as you know, and I would hardly classify it as romance, at least in the modern sense that I think you were using in "ye romance readers" above. I'd call it, um, melodrama?

Okay, The Count of Monte Cristo is actually a swashbuckling melodrama. But with a big romantic element, what with Young Morrel and Valentine Wossname. I mean, okay, 1500 pages, so a lot happens, but...?

How about The Three Musketeers?

O ye romance readers, how many of you read Sir Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas? And can you express why you do/don't?

I haven't, but not for any deeper reason than "haven't gotten around to it yet."

ION, I've become convinced I really need to give Dorothy Dunnett a second try. I attempted the first Lymond book years ago and never got past the first chapter. Any advice?

I haven't read Three Musketeers, but isn't it about, um, men? Also, doesn't it swash and buckle. One of the defining characteristics of a modern romance is it's about a woman and a man (or, to not exclude homosexual romance, about a bonded romantic pair), not four guys who are buddies and one of them has a girlfriend.

not four guys who are buddies and one of them has a girlfriend.

There's an ex-girlfriend too. She's evil and kills the girlfriend. Then she herself is killed. So by the end of the book? NSM with the women messing up the menage a quatre.

Older definitions of "romance" re: books seems to tend to something more adventurous than stories about everyday life. Such as when people talk about living in a more "romantic" era. I think it's a somewhat more intellectually acceptable term than melodrama.

So nice I said it twice.

I think it's a somewhat more intellectually acceptable term than melodrama.

It's specifically related to the medieval Romance, which was a tale of knightly adventure and magic and thwarted love. Orlando Furioso being the prime example. It doesn't really have much to do with melodrama as a genre, though medieval Romances were often melodramatic.

These long prose narratives were the equivalent of popular fiction in their time. It is why novels are called "Roman" in France to this day.

It is this sense of "Romance" which Hawthorne alludes to in The Scarlet Letter - by which he meant, "not bound by strict realism."