Today

is the 141st anniversary of the death of Alexandre Dumas (the elder). Although he made his literary debut as a playwright, he is most famous as the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

When I first read the Musketeers books and The Count of Monte Cristo, I wasn't quite old enough to pick up on all the greater themes that a literature class might have brought to the table. It was all swashbuckling adventure fiction in my eyes. I wanted to be d'Artagnan for a while (though I had enough sense not to want to be Edmond Dantès; I was never really a vengeful sort of child). I think I told my mum once that I wanted to take up fencing, but I remember she was properly horrified (thought it unbecoming of a little girl, probably), so I never brought it up again. Then I told my father I wanted a feathered hat, and he was amused, and told me he'd find me one for Hallowe'en (which was at the time several months away, so he forgot about it by October). This was my version of "playing dress-up" or "knights and ladies" or whatever small children played.

Anyhow, Alexandre Dumas, a significant influence on my childhood. I rediscovered this particular breed of fiction in my teens, in the form of Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances (also fun reads, and heavily stylistic). If you like one (and are open to some genre-crossing), you'll like the other.

NYTimes: Russia's "Illegals"

This could be fuel for more than a few thriller novels -- or James Bond films (my father has a slight obsession with them):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/world/europe/30sleepers.html?hpw

Deep-cover spies seem rather anachronistic in this day and age -- a relic of the Cold War, perhaps -- but I can see why the idea is appealing. It's like the way small girls love having "secrets" in the schoolyard, secrets they can deny their classmates and giggle about amongst themselves, or how small boys are attracted to the idea of having a pistol hidden in the lining of an expensive suit. It's the same impulse that explains, methinks, my love of Sherlock Holmes and Dumas's musketeers.

The World is Just Awesome (and so is the Discovery Channel)

I'm posting this just for the warm fuzzies:



I absolutely loved the Discovery Channel as a kid, and still do. What little television I watched growing up consisted of that, the History Channel, National Geographic (the television channel, though I also read the magazines, and have papered my college dorm room with maps therefrom), and Animal Planet. I like to say that I got my action-adventure fixes from Sherlock Holmes and The Three Musketeers (and I throw in Shark Week for variety, on occasion).

I've been told that I had a bit of a deprived childhood -- and I never do get pop-culture references -- but I think I turn out all right, all things considered.

Boom-de-yada!