hckrnws
Count of Monte Cristo is also semi fictional.
A few month's ago I started reading Three Musketeers again. I had forgotten how relentless and fast moving it is. Moving from one action set piece to the next from beginning to end. It is almost overpowering, literally had to catch my breadth before turning a page.
I had forgotten how it was when I had read it as a kid.
I read both of these in the last year and they're both phenomenal. I'm working my way through the classics, there's a reason they've survived centuries.
Actually, I listened to a dramatization of The Three Musketeers and I was struck by how _funny_ it is. The 4-way duel at the beginning is hilarious and Aramis' and Porthos' respective romantic escapades give great comic relief to what is otherwise an action packed adventure.
The Count of Monte Cristo is an investment, and the middle third drags, but it's necessary to set up the final third, which is so rewarding for the reader. It's the best tale of revenge and redemption I've ever read.
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"""Hey ChatGPT, I've heard you make a good book club partner. I've just read [Three Musketeers|Count of Monte Cristo] and want to have a discussion about it. Ask me what I think before you tell me what you think, let's go!"""
...I read both of the books recently and it was illuminating to be able to near-instantly explore avenues of insight/criticism of both of the books. Three Musketeers matches fairly closely to Wizard of Oz (vice versa actually), and Monte Cristo raises some really interesting questions if you view "The Count" as basically a fallen angel of divine justice (and the benefits/costs to him via that role).
Since my circle of IRL people who'd recently read both the unabridged books in the last month is infinitesimally small, it was one of my first "arms-length" test cases of "The GPT's" for fitness-for-purpose. I'm still a bit muddy on throwing a bunch of personal data and thoughts to remote servers (or becoming dependent on that interaction pattern), but digging in and analyzing old books was a great kindof gut-check and something I enjoy doing when finishing a book.
I know it's regurgitating a bunch of of reddit comments and academic books/papers (in Dumas's case), but overall- highly recommended!
Yes...clearly running to something that is "regurgitating a bunch of of reddit comments and academic books/papers" is much, much better than finding a couple of actual humans that read books, and then talking to them. Peak AI right there.
I get your angle, but have you ever read the discourse between humans regarding fiction?
I mean humans have made death threats towards other humans about whether or not Han shot first.
fiction-fan-discourse is a very low bar on the rankings of human social interaction. I'm not saying that makes it replacable and trivial, but let's not pretend that every fiction discussion with another honest to god human being is a Rembrandt.
You can say this about virtually any human interaction; I'm often amazed at the sort of nonsense some people think is vitally relevant. I would far prefer talking to other humans about fiction and risk the occasion nutcase (that I can walk away from and ignore) than retreat into "tell me plausible rehashes of rehashes of other peoples thoughts and don't upset me with all that icky human interaction stuff".
You're invited to my party!
Not very popular to admit LLMs have uses, I’ve used it to recommend similar movies or books to ones I like.
This is peak human to human sharing recommendations.
"""I have an idea for a movie club, where two movies with a tenuously connected theme are watched (separately) and then discussed. If you've seen the movies "XXX", and "YYY", tell me what is similar about them, what's different, what are some possible "connected themes" and who tackled the topic better?"""
...time passes...
"""Now that you understand the idea behind these pairings, recommend five more pairings, but don't give any hints as to their connections, just five bullet points with "A vs B" movie titles. Bonus points if there is at least a 10-year gap between them, and they are both not box-office blockbusters (but make sure they are slightly more popular or recognizable movies, not exclusively low-distribution non-critically-acclaimed indie movies)."""
* Children of Men vs Snowpiercer * Lost in Translation vs Frances Ha * No Country for Old Men vs Hell or High Water * The Prestige vs The Illusionist * Drive vs Nightcrawler
...I know guidance is "don't just post AI output", but this is specifically a human-to-human discussion around novel(?) ways to interact with AI/LLM's. I've found they're _really_ good at conceptual-venn-diagrams.
There's a book "Algorithms to Live By" (ie: look for matching socks via BFS/DFS or whatever). Asking the AI: "you know a bunch of algorithms, what are the top three that should have been in the book?" => "what are the weakest that could have been removed?"
Recently during performance reviews, we had to write our self-assessment and had guidance from on high like: "make sure you talk about people skills, technical skills, customer impact, etc." ...so yada yada: "I'm so amazing, I'm so great" => "Dear AI, I've been given this guidance `...`, please compare my handcrafted storytelling against the guidance `...` and tell me where I have missed covering a requirement" => "...now please give help w.r.t. simplifying or cleaning up the section on $INCREDIBLE_TECHNICAL_ACHIEVEMENT b/c I was focusing on describing my personal impact, but need help making it more digestible for others".
The combination of instant, tailored feedback and the fact that they've read the whole internet, "watched" every movie (read the script, read critics reviews, reddit, forum discussions, etc), read most published books, and that they're 80%+ plumbers, doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, etc. make them an unstoppable research assistant, especially when crossing connections that would normally be "expensive" to do so.
Example: ask a [doctor+lawyer+plumber] about the health and legal impacts of lead solder in pipes or whatever. Instead of needing to schedule 3 people's times, wait for them, pay them, etc, you can get instant "free" feedback, educate yourself, and then have a more solid foundation to branch out from there. Such incredibly useful tools!
One of the best lines I read about "Three Musketeers" went approximately like so: "What do you do if your duty before your country, your military orders, your friendships, your love, and your honor all contradict each other beyond reconciliation?"
That sells it for me. It's on my reading list now.
The Three Musketeers is my favorite adventure story of all time. The story of how D'Artagnan insults all three musketeers in succession at their first meeting, challenges them to duels one after the other, and ends up fighting on their side in a melee against the royal guards is just one of countless, hilarious adventures. The book just gets better from there.
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A reminder that The Count of Monte Cristo is inspired by the mixed race father of the author, General Alexander Dumas, who also had a somewhat fascinating life riding currents of fate during the French revolution.
The Black Count
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count
Thomas Alexandre Dumas is a fascinating character, not only because he rose from slavery to a general of Napoleon, but he was also a spectacular, real swashbuckler known for daring action.
I have no idea why there's still no big movie about him.
I'm relying on memory and it's a little pedantic, but did he actually ever experience life as a slave? His mother was a slave, but as I recall his deadbeat and slaveowner father accepted him as his son and introduced him to French society early on, but I'm not sure if he dragged his feet before doing so in the French colonies before returning to France.
I'm no expert on the details, but I thought he was sold as a slave and then bought by his dad. No idea how much time he actually spent in slavery.
Hold on…that was an entirely fictional story?
Is there some part of it that was based on real people?
This autumn I have visited the Lavardens Castle which had an exhibition on D'Artagnan. Stole the English version of the explanations (QR codes, hosted incognito on their website)
Some Swedes will be delighted to learn that not only was there a historical d'Artagnan, but also a real life cardinal named Mazarin. But I have yet to find a historical person named Loranga.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loranga,_Masarin_och_Dartanjan...
There were in fact two Mazarin cardinals. The one people know about, who happened to be one of the major statesmen in Europe at the time, and his brother who was notoriously useless.
> his brother who was notoriously useless.
So, he became a priest? (Father Ted [a literary classic] reference)
> So, he became a priest? (Father Ted [a literary classic] reference)
Galileo had (illegitimate) daughters but was unable to find husbands for them, so their remaining options were to become nuns. One seems to have quite brilliant, but the other a drunk:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Daughter
Back in the day the Church was the social safety net of society, so many folks ended up in monasteries as a form of charity for folks that would perhaps otherwise would have no other way to support themselves.
Only if you were reasonably wealthy.
Monasteries were not orphanages. You could sometimes dump a baby off there (they had deposit bins specifically for that), but they wouldn't raise it. They would usually find somebody else to take care of it.
Monasteries did not have accept older children or adults, either. Children given to the church would often come with money for their care and feeding. The poor would often get turned away.
A monastery could be a safe place to house offspring who didn't have a family who could (publicly) support them. They were also good places for second sons and other spare children, and with enough money donated they could work their way up in the church hierarchy to do the family some good.
But it was a lousy social safety net.
Genearlly nuns would enter to convent before puberty while boys would enter the monastary after. You are right that they were not orphanages and did not take young children, thou what orphanages there were, were run by the Church. Abandoing newborns to a orphanage was not possible. Babies can't survive on cow's milk, especially the unpastuzed kind.
AFAIK, babies can survive on goat milk (barely). I think I read that this was used in the past when the mother died and there was no wet nurse available.
Wet nurses were also an option. Presumably not from the monastery, but from a nearby village.
The three musketeers - fictional
d'Artagnan - real
Cardinal Richelieu - real
Queen Anne - real
Louis XIII - real
France - fictional
I laughed so loudly it startled the cat
Sacrebleu !
Same here. I thought it was completely fictional.
So, I immediately looked it up. There was a real d'Artagnan, he was kind of a big deal, so Dumas wrote some stories based on a fictionalized version of the real d'Artagnan.
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Wow, that's really cool. I knew that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person (and that he is credited with inventing the butter knife!), but I didn't realize there were others.
D'Artagnan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Batz_de_Castelmore_...
Cardinal Mazarin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mazarin
Athos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_d%27Athos
Porthos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_de_Porthau
Aramis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_d%27Aramitz
Comte de Troisville (D'artagnan's mentor) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Troisville
All highly fictionalized and I have had trouble finding information on the real counterparts (aside from the Cardinal). I started learning about that period of history after listening to the D'Artagnan Romances in audiobook form.
The other interesting thing is Gatien de Courtilz de Sanras wrote semi-fictional accounts of D'Artagnan, published 27 years after D'artagnan's death and 144 years before Dumas' The Three Musketeers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatien_de_Courtilz_de_Sandras ).
Don't forget the Duke of Buckingham - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Villiers,_1st_Duke_of_B.... Dumas' fictionalized version was far better than the real person.
> I knew that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person
And he was more than a big deal. One of the most powerful people in Europe at the time.
Maastricht today is not a French city. The city was returned after a peace treaty.
A hero and a heroic death in a pointless war.
I read the original Dumas story a few years back. Never had any idea.
I had a similar experience with the characters in Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. A number of the fictional characters were amalgamations of actual historical figures, with added or modified histories. For example, the character of Sir Wołodyjowski is actually drawn from two figures with the same surname.
(For those interested, Jerzy Hoffman has produced excellent film adaptations of these books, two while navigating communist censorship, which is why they were filmed in reverse order. In reading order:
- "With Fire and Sword" (1999) [1]
- "The Deluge" (1974) [0] (trailer for the significantly shortened 2014 director's cut [3])
- "The Colonel Wołodyjowski" [2]
In my opinion, and this is widely regarded to be the case, the original 5+ hour "The Deluge" is the best of the three and frankly one of the best movies I've ever watched.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdrKEEt_nc
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCESk2joFo8
Darn it. I literally just passed through and transferred trains in Maastricht in the last 2 weeks. What with the “anytime today” flexibility of Dutch and Belgian train travel, I would have loved to make a visit to the church a side quest.
One of my favorite books -- I had no idea there was a real-life inspiration for it (Balzampleu!) This will get me to re-read it, it's been too long. :)
I was aware that Aramis and of course the various royals and aristocrats were real, but not the individual soldiers. Loved this novel growing, seems like the Count of Monte Cristo is seen as more 'serious' literature, but the Three Musketeers will always have a special place in my mind.
> I was aware that Aramis and of course the various royals and aristocrats were real
It's more that their names were real, but their descriptions and their actions in the books are almost entirely fictional.
Time for the next installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Jack Sparrow and/vs/saves the 3 Musketeers.
there’s no hard evidence here. the “99%” referenced in the article is someone’s personal subjective confidence it’s him. body buried under church is not particularly eventful news as it stands.
That sounds like someone just decided to have a dig around inside the church.
What bothers me about these kinds of things is that we are sanitizing all of the soil of indigenous culture exactly like was done in other place around the globe by the force that drove "colonialism".
Now this impulse to scour and loot humanity of its indigenous cultural sites is turned on the indigenous Europeans, by the same ruling class and their institutional "researchers", "scientists" and "adventurer" apparatchiks that also scoured and looted the reset of the world and stored it in their museums, e.g., Egyptian artifacts.
Is nothing sacred or "holy" anymore? Can nothing survive the self-important narcissism of "scientists" that must impose themselves on everyone against their will? Why are we allowing these types of "scientists" to just plunder and destroy the cultural artifacts and sites simply because they are curious and want to write self-important papers to advance their careers and standing?
It's literally grave robbery, only more pretentious because the "scientists" are creating "collections" in their institutions. This is the very same kind of "scientist" with no respect for humanity that created the scientific classification that created racist supremacism...for science, of course.
How would you feel about "scientists" digging up and grave robbing and filing away the bones of some African, Asian, or South American indigenous? Why should we accept it for European indigenous?
People complain about the fact that, e.g., the British did it for centuries, e.g., all over Egypt and Indian grave and cultural sites, yet people are fine with these people doing it to the European indigenous cultural sites apparently. How about we reject this kind of purging and sanitizing of the earth of indigenous culture everywhere or at least come up with some standard of restoring things once investigated. All these artifacts survived literal millennia, but most of them will not survive the pretentious self-important narcissism of "scientist" grave robbers.
Is this satire?
> at least come up with some standard of restoring things once investigated.
Huh ? Have you seen US give Venezuela its oil back ? We are human beings. /s
> All these artifacts survived literal millennia
Thousand of years, yes. Only some dinosaurs bones survived literal millennia.
Paleolithic grave sites have also survived literal millennia. You do know that a millennia is only 1000 years, do you?
For example:
Sung(h)ir, modern Russia, 34 millennia ago, i.e., 34,000 years https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/paleolithic-burial-sungh...
Or a 9000 year old woman shaman burial in modern Germany https://archaeologymag.com/2025/12/bad-durrenberg-woman-sham...
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