Seen Read Heard: October 2025

This month’s reads and listens include The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and my first Kindle Book, Horse, by Geraldine Brooks. 

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
My father brought home a new copy of The Count of Monte Cristo for me when I was about 10 years old, in 1973. I have carried the book with me everywhere I have lived since leaving my childhood home. I still have not read the book, but now I can say I have listened to it, to over 52 hours of narration by voice actor Bill Homewood. 

I get why my dad wanted to share this childhood favorite of his. I only wish I had him around to talk about it as I was listening. It tells of great adventure and fantastic characters. It makes you “willingly suspend disbelief” like much of great literature. If we were talking as I “read” the book, I would have been telling dad how entertained I was in the first three-quarters of the book, but as I got to the last quarter, I would have shared that I was troubled. Edmund Dantes had been wrongfully jailed, he had made a miraculous escape from prison and found a fabulous hidden treasure, but his every move after escaping the jail at Château d’If had been about exacting revenge on the three men who had framed him, putting him in jail on the day of his wedding. As I listened, all of the vengefulness grew wearisome.  

Since Dad had long since finished the book, and with his amazing memory, he would have known that Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, would eventually question his own vengefulness. 

“Fool that I am,” said he, “that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself.” (I can’t note a page number since I listened to a recording. I am using Goodreads to help identify the quotes that resonated with me most). 

“Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”

I think also of the most powerful sentiment in Shakespeare’s Othello, one of the few lines from any play that I can come close to reciting from memory: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.” (Iago to Othello in Act 3, Scene 3). Vengeance and jealousy go together. The great storytellers of all time, like Dumas and Shakespeare, have made the point that humans can really suffer when they focus so much on getting revenge or on “solving” their jealousy. 

I was glad to get to the message in Monte Cristo that vengeance, while it could be “sweet,” could also be all-consuming, could have ancillary dire consequences, and does not make the world a better place. 

The tale of Monte Cristo ends with not everybody happy and with many people having died unnecessarily, but it also ends with a wise sentiment telling readers since the 1840s that perseverance, not vengeance, is such a virtue: 

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words – ”Wait and Hope.’”

Horse by Geraldine Brooks
This was my first time to read a book on a Kindle. I prefer a hard copy. I like being able to skim through the pages and see underlining and marginalia. In the Kindle, all of those markings I made look alike. It’s much more burdensome to “re-skim.”

But, e-book or print copy, the story was tremendous. It was the rare winner of universal support from my book club. Brooks took historical facts about a certain horse from the 1850s (a horse from which many later champion racers had descended) and created a remarkable story of the people around the horse as well as of the horses themselves. I do not consider myself a horse guy, but I was thrilled to have the book club meet at a stable and get to see and smell some of the story we had all read.

QUOTES from Kindle 
One appeal of Brooks’ story was the weaving of eras, from the late 1800s to the 1950s, with a thread in the 2010s. She had observations and poignant commentary on each era. I marked observations from two of the time periods:.

2010s: 
“An American school? Where they sit in a circle and discuss their feelings, instead of learning coding and calculus?” (27)

“She liked people who talked to their dogs.” (167… she would have liked me).

1850s:
 “A racehorse is a mirror, and a man sees his own reflection there.” (40)

“Only horses were honest, in the end.” (117)

“Let the power of his body hurl the tension from his body and the anger from his soul.” (182)

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (268)

“He was as far superior to all horses that have gone before him as the vertical blaze of a tropical sun is superior to the faint and scarcely distinguishable glimmer of the most distant star.” (374)