I think I've read Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo twice by eye, and now once by ear. Continuing to listen to audiobooks while working out and doing chores around the house, I decided a familiar tale would be good fun. I first read the book when I was about 12 years old, and I think it changed the way I thought about reading. Before that time, I was mostly reading Christian authors or "gentler" classics. I had been exposed to a lot of fluff, or stories that didn't deal much with darker themes of sin, revenge, and death. Some of the events in the book, from execution to buried secrets, were things I didn't know I could read about, and the plans of Edmund Dantes to serve as the hand of God in giving retribution to all the people who sinned against him in his youth, were new and very intriguing to me, and much deeper than most other books I had read up to that point. From there on out, I was off in a new direction. I spent a good amount of time reading more Dumas books, for certain.

Quick plot for the unexposed: young, successful, engaged, newly-appointed captain of a ship is framed as a Bonapartist by jealous men on his wedding day and thrown into an infamous prison on an island in the middle of the ocean. His escape and retaliation follow.

The version of the story I listened to had a wonderful narrator, who was very talented in portraying the nature of his characters with his tone of voice. At the start of the story, Edmund Dantes was given a young and lighthearted voice, and that combined with Dumas' words made it incredibly easy to imagine and understand Edmund as a person. As things progress, the tone of the story changes, as does the coloring of the narration. The darkness of the Count of Monte Cristo provides a great contrast with the likes of Maximillian and Valentine, as well as Albert. I loved it.

I always remembered this book as being more serious, but giving it another read, I noticed that there is much more of a sense of humor in it than I recalled, and a lighter tone as well. While there are plenty of dark occurrences and sad displays of human nature, Dumas peppers his story with a very wry sense of humor. An unplanned laugh at a clever phrase or remark would slip out while I was doing chores around the house or in the yard. I smiled a lot while listening to the story, especially hearing the warm tones of word and voice used to describe the actions and hearts of the younger characters.

The idea of revenge is prevalent, but not so much as a cold-hearted attack as the rightful distribution of consequences upon those who deserve it. The Count does become a bit arrogant in this process, but certain events help him realize that he assumed too much personal responsibility for others' comeuppances. He sees that his desire for justice has become selfish, and that he has moved himself up to the level of God in handing out his sentences. Throughout the novel, themes about man, God, responsibility, and final judgment are pondered quite a bit, and it was very encouraging for me to remember the state of the Count's soul at the story's end. Maybe I focused on ideas of revenge more as a kid because I thought it was kind of cool, but revisiting the story as an adult proved to be beneficial because there was another layer to the story that I appreciated.

Last but not least, this story is an adventure, which makes it a very exciting read! Scary prisons, cunning rich men with secrets, notorious robbers, people assuming multiple identities, a secret treasure, a prison escape, multiple poisonings, affairs, true love and innocence, a princess, and more fill the pages (or cassettes) with plenty to entertain and ignite the imagination.

I had so many more musings that I meant to write down while I was listening to The Count of Monte Cristo, but these are plenty enough, for this time. I'm sure I'll revisit it again one day. But for now, I'll just give one of the final quotes of the book, which always resonated with me, "Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'."

September 27th can't come soon enough.

Ric and I have been looking forward to seeing Superbad since the first trailer we saw back in May. It had Michael Cera from Arrested Development, it was written by Seth Rogen, and it had a Van Halen song in the soundtrack. What more could Ric ask for? And I was sold with the "Boop!" scene in the trailer. Tens of times of seeing the commercials later, we finally got to see it. And we both laughed. We laughed a lot.

The story reminds me of all the 1980s coming of age party movies, where the geeky high school student has a crush on someone hot, and we follow the adventures of that geeky student as they try to get with their hot classmate. That's basically what this movie is: Seth and Evan want to hook up with the girls they have crushes on at a party, so they can have girlfriends for the summer before going off to college. Their focus, since classmates found out their even geekier friend, Fogell, has a fake ID, is to get drinks for the party, because if they get drinks, the girls they like might just get drunk enough to like them. The majority of the movie shows their adventures in getting to the party. I'm not giving any spoilers there, because some of their side-ventures are pretty funny.

Is the movie crude, like you've heard? Absolutely. It's worse than Knocked Up (but a better movie overall), and contains a lot of shock-value moments. But some of those moments had my husband unable to breathe because he was laughing so hard, and besides that, the movie has a heart underneath it all that makes it that much better. Also, the awkwardness of high school interaction is captured perfectly with Evan's character, which Michael Cera is so awesome at portraying. Evan's best friend, Seth, reminds me of so many guys I knew in high school that put on a huge persona, and like Ebert pointed out in his review, is the epitome of a guy who is inexperienced but covers it up by cursing and talking about sex all the more.

Honestly, I saw so many movies over the summer that were full of explosions and special effects, which were fun to look at, but had hardly any heart. This movie, with all of its own shocking moments, did more for me than those others. Sure, I flinched and said, "That's terrible!" at several jokes, but I wasn't personally offended, and could see how it appealed to a male audience a little bit more than to me specifically. The great friendship between Seth and Evan and the innocence with which they approach the whole thing made it that much more of a good movie, instead of being all about crude jokes. Anyway, I liked it, Ric loved it, and we'll probably see it again.

Daredevil: The Devil, Inside and Out, Vol. 2 by Ed Brubaker

I forgot in all my busyness to do write-ups of the concerts I attended this month. With school, work, and other stuff taking up the bulk of my time, I've neglected you fine folks.

Earlier in the month I went with Jeff (some of you might remember him as Jeffywan back in the Ikonboard days)to see The Violent Femmes at the House of Blues in Anaheim. I really dig that venue. We ate dinner there beforehand so we got in early. It was really packed out, lots of younger folks. It was pretty funny because they (the young ones) didn't know hardly any of the Femme's songs except "Blister in the Sun" and "Add It Up." Most of them didn't even know "Kiss Off." I think Gano and company knew this because they didn't play those songs until the VERY end of the show. The Femmes played for well over an hour and sounded great. They had their full horns section, which they didn't have last time I saw them. The one complaint I have about the show is that since they were filming a DVD they had the sound way up. It was mind numbingly loud. I had ear plugs in and my ears were still ringing for a day or two after the show.

Monday night I went with Christy to see Wilco at the open air theater at SDSU. It was a really good time. There was no opening act, but Wilco played for a long time and sounded great. Jeff Tweedy is quite a character. We were sitting pretty high up but still had a good view and the weather was great. I definitely want to see Wilco again sometime.

My next concert will probably be They Might Be Giants at the Anaheim House of Blues. I'm still waiting for the Two For Tuesday deal to pop up on that. Also, Morrissey is playing 10 (!) shows at the Paladium in October so I'll probably hit up one of those. Add the usual Knott's Scary Farm trip, a Disneyland trip to check out the Halloween decorations and Haunted Mansion Holdiay, a possible Universal Studios visit, a poker tournament at the Secret Stash, Kevin's book signing, and whatever else pops up and I have a busy couple months ahead of me. Good times.