The Three Musketeers by A. Dumas

I pulled a copy of The Three Musketeers off Gutenberg and tossed it on my e-reader. I read it once when I was nine or ten years old. Unlike many kids, I enjoyed reading "classics" when I was young (though I later learned that reading them as class assignments often sucked the fun out of them!)

Well, I'm enjoying it all over again. It's fun, lively, and a joy to read. In fact, it got me to thinking...about possibly giving it a try in French.

Now, I don't really have any skill with French. I never took any classes, and haven't had occasion to speak the language. I have read one book in French, however, Au Fond des Mers en Bathyscaphe, by Auguste Piccard. I had the advantage there of being very familiar with the subject, and the fact that most writing, if sufficiently technical, becomes a sort of Engineer's Esperanto. Even Russian if you can sound out the Cyrillic text.

So I'm considering taking a crack at reading a second book in French this summer. Since there is so much in the way of interpersonal relationships and emotion, I'll probably get lost in the grammar. When Piccard writes, even when describing the feelings he experienced on a voyage kilometers deep in the ocean, his writing style is direct enough that his meaning is clear. Even to a non-French speaker like me.

I think I'm going to put a reminder in on my calendar for myself and give Les Trois Mousquetaires en Français a try later this year. It'll be an adventure.