While I should have known, I wasn’t prepared for how much of a summer banger Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is. I may only be a fourth of the way through this opus, but it’s one of the breeziest 19th century reads I’ve wrangled, and so far, a pitch perfect swashbuckling adventure.

A thick paperback edition of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is resting on a black metal mesh table.