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Do you need to jump start your new year? Do you need to find yourself a new outlook on life? Do you sometimes wish you were alive in the 20s and 30s and 40s, sipping the bubbly out of delicate coupe glasses, experiencing the budding jazz movement in a smokey bar, surrounded by gentleman who still open the doors and pick up the check for a pretty lady? Do you enjoy reading a perfectly poetic and unexpected story, one that you cannot put down until the very end and then even at the end you long for just a little more, just one more sentence. Dear friends, then run … do not walk, to the nearest book store and pick up this gem of a tale, namely the ‘Rules of Civility’.
My new office is a multi-company space, largely filled by an architecture firm that surrounds the walls + crevices + overhangs with towers and bridges and skyscrapers. The rest of the space is filled with a combination of tech companies, start-ups and one non-profit. There is a free, one-cup-flowing-a-plenty coffee maker within the kitchen/staff room and a large, flat screen TV adorning the wall. And while all these things are welcome and quite an upgrade from past work environments – my favorite feature of my new office is the employee book exchange.
The deal is thus … you bring a book, you share a book, you take a book, you read a book. This is how I came to hold ‘The Girl in Blue’. See, a friend had given me two of the ‘Twilight’ books because he was uninterested in the tale – and I admit to feeling the exact same way. But throwing away a book is incredibly wasteful, so instead I brought the two tomes to my book exchange and instead found this brightly-covered, humorous, little gem and was able to enjoy a tale much more to my liking.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a well-known, well-read, many times adapted story. It was released in France in 1844 via a newspaper serialization series by Alexandre Dumas, and has since been displayed on the stage and on the big screen many times – with it’s latest version being released in 2002. However, even Dumas’s version was not original – in reality, there was a true, living ‘Count’ although not exactly as portrayed by Dumas. Dumas took the essence of the story from a collection of old police case files, exaggerated it, enhanced it, and renamed it ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.
I admit, this story is nothing if not exciting. But this is not a tale of love and happiness and light. This is a story of revenge and the evilness of man. Edmond Dantes (aka the Count) – throughout a large portion of the tale – exacts revenge on those who have wronged him. And in the large sense they had it coming.
