Several things, but the big one is…I’m re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo.
I’d been evading a re-read for the last several years because I’ve always found the betrayal of Dantès unbearable, even though it stimulates a yearning for what happens in the rest of the story.
It’s a set up and I know it’s a set up. Well, it works. Elaborately.
Of course, the Count, né Edmund Dantès, has to get obscenely rich in order to pursue his enemies with intelligence and subtlety. (I don’t know whether it’s the age our White House is living in or my age, but as the Count buys horses and houses and richly decorates them in a couple of hours, my bookkeeping head is totaling the expenditures and wondering whether he’ll run out of money.)
I’m mentally lining up my enemies against a wall in one of the Count’s gardens and doing them in even before he deals with his enemies. I don’t have his patience. I don’t have his money, either, but I’ve got all the mod cons.
First, though, I’ll finish the book.