Maybe If It Was Told Around a Campfire

One Thousand and One Ghosts never hit that tally and never had the fright level one expects in tales about encounters with spectres. The style is recognizably Dumas and there is enough French history post reign of terror to make stories about vengeful nobles timely. I suspect his dealing with the barbary of the guillotine is less diatribe than the Hugo on the Hesperus list.

I am still finding it difficult to find something noteworthy, let alone erudite, to write about these novellas, distracted as I am by several good movies I have interspersed given my long empty work-less (pay-less) afternoons. Today, before finishing Dumas, I watched An Education which is a fine rendition of the seduced sixteen year old by the older lying married man and read the subtitles from A Heart in Winter while my younger son vacuumed the house. That story more typical of French cinema has the characters never acting as you hope they do; always finding more honesty in their frustrations and daily lives than from a Hollywood glossed story where no love goes unfulfilled. Work and self knowledge are esteemed as more meaningful than flings. Quite a contrast to An Education where the plot is so formulaic and predictable. I liked the portrayal of French community which is sorely absent in the British flic ... from all the overheard conversations in the bistro, in friends houses in the middle of the night. The dialogue from An Education is not as tangential, more moralistic teachers at school or stark vacuity of bimbo hanger-ons.

I guess I have to attack the book selected for my face-to-face book club for the 31st. Got a reminder from the co-chair today. It is a Booker Prize book so hopefully once I get further into it, I'll get engaged and finally be happy about summer reading. Think a comedy movie might help as well. As would challenging work.