Today is such a nice day that I couldn't stand to be indoors. So I left around 4:30 and came home and planted some seeds my neighbor gave me. I tied the sage up into a weird little pseudo-topiary while I was at it. Don't plant sage unless you're ready to make a lifetime commitment. I inherited the sage, and despite my best efforts last year to kill it off, it's flourishing this year, undaunted. *sigh* At least it smells good.

Now I'm feeling hot and dehydrated and ready to curl up under the AC and read The Historian

I was thinking about the fact that I have so many vampire books that I could probably write my own book about them. (The Historian deals with the legend of Vlad Tepes III, aka "The Impaler.") So I started thinking about what I'd write. A comparison of what the mechanics and sociology of vampirism would one good place to start. Off the top of my head, I came up with this:

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This morning around 2am I finished The Club Dumas, also known as the source for the Johnny Depp movie The Ninth Gate.

The friend who loaned it to me said that it was different from the movie, and that it definitely was.

Perez-Reverte packs a lot of characterization and arcane book description into this rather slim volume. One chapter seems to pretty much explain how to forge an old book, if you're so inclined and have lots of money. (Lots of money.)

His characters are quirky and easy to imagine. There's lots of action and mystery in the book, so there's more too it than his discussions of the antique book trade. I'd describe it as a mystery that explains a fictional version of the antique book trade in a detailed,yet entertaining manner.
The novel also reveals a lot about Dumas, as one would expect from the title. I found that fascinating, too.

Perez-Reverte uses the Battle of Waterloo and of course the writings of Dumas and serial novels in general as parallels for the plot of The Club Dumas. He's very upfront about it - the protagonist, Corso, draws the parallels across time and into the bounds of fiction himself. Corso imagines himself as a character in a book, which of course he is, and I got a kick out of that bit of "breaking the frame." It kind of sucks you in - a character thinking about how he's a character, while you read the book, knowing that it's the fact that the author wrote about him and you're reading it that brings hime to life in the first place.

Perez-Reverte also does some crazy things with the narrative structure. Most of the book is told by a character who is not the protagonist. He says that Corso related the events to him. Most of the narration is third person with two chapters in first that feature the narrator. However, I think that the narrator knows nothing at all about the last chapter.

Anyway - I thought it was really cool. It would've been cooler if I'd been more up on my writings of Dumas, but eh. I liked The Count of Monte Cristo (during my high school years, I really LOVED stories about vengeance), but I could not get into The Three Musketeers. I actually think I had the same problem with it that "Milady" in The Club Dumas had - I thought, "Who are these assholes and why are they considered literary heroes?" The Musketeers just didn't seem very heroic to me.

( spoilers )

"So did you like your book?" George asked me after I'd closed the back cover on The Prince of Tides and told him about the ending.
( um ... well ... )