20. A book we read in high school/college and hated:
 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

List Progress: 23/25

I was originally going to do Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen for this slot, as I had a class in high school where I was very annoyed with the teacher. But while browsing the Classics shelf in my local library, my eyes fell upon this book and I felt a rush of pure literary rage from my adolescent self. It was eighth grade, I was homeschooled for the only year of my academic career, and my mother’s favorite book was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

I loathed it.

More specifically, I loathed all four of the protagonists and sided completely with the villain, to my mom’s dismay. But with fourteen years, a lot of maturity, and some more nuanced understandings of feminism, classism and character development under my belt, it is time for me to dive back in.

Let me start off: I still hate D’Artagnan, Athos and Porthos as people (I have a grudging fondness for Aramis). They are pretentious, misogynistic, violent, incompetent, hot-headed jerks who follow codes of honor and law when it suits them, and make the lives of all around them more difficult. They are terrible, terrible men (and given how clearly this is conveyed at points, there feels like a strong element of satire here from Dumas). But I have grown enough as a reader in the intervening years to be able to acknowledge that they can be interesting characters.

I had a lot more fun than I expected with The Three Musketeers, because above all it is a quick-moving action story with a lot of races against various clocks and court intrigues. When the book treats the Musketeers as pieces on a game board, moving them quickly around as tools of the plot, I can get caught up in the fun of the chase. It is when the narrative tries to make me care about the “nobility” of Athos or the heartbreak of D’Artagnan that it loses me and I start cheering for Milady.

Milady de Winter is the best part of The Three Musketeers and I will challenge anyone who disagrees with me to a duel. She’s a cunning, devious villain who can get her way out of almost any snare, and the narrative clearly finds her the most interesting as well. Near the end of the novel, there are over six chapters where none of the protagonists appear and the plot focuses entirely on Milady getting out of prison. It is great and I literally groaned when the “main” plot resumed.

I had fun reading The Three Musketeers, which was not what I expected. I don’t think it was mind blowing or vital to read, but there were a lot of points where it was fun. If you’re willing to read over 600 pages for some fun, I’d say give it a try, but there are probably better places to get that experience. And Milady de Winter 4 Life!

Would I Recommend It: Ehhhh, a soft yes.

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Chelsea is determined to make it to her brother’s wedding. And she’s not going to let the fact that she’s been dead for two years stop her.

Joining with her mime friend from a New York City park and her ghostly mentor with forty years of afterlife under her belt, the three women set out on foot for San Francisco. Along the way, they are faced with joy, sorrow, and the haunting surprises of the open road. This humorous and lightly macabre journey explores relationships, personal burdens, and what it means to keep moving, even when your heartbeat has stopped.