There are certain books every literate person needs to read. Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is one of them. I love Arturo Perez Reverte’s The Club Dumas which was made into The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp. The Three Musketeers was a major plot point in Vikas Swarup’s Q and A which was made into Slumdog Millionaire. I have been wanting and feeling the need to read Dumas’ masterpiece but kept putting it off. Mostly out of laziness. Sadly, the size threw me off. Finally, I was prepared. I picked up the book, opened the cover, and felt a chill. Looking at the title page, I thought of all the people who had read this book. All the people who had reread this book. All the copies that existed. And I was at last joining that legion. Reading a classic book is like walking on those worn down stone steps at Westminister Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, or the Louvre. As you turn the pages, you feel that weighty history, of hundreds of thousands of other readers turning the same pages, in different editions, different languages, different translations.
Goth Grammarist 