More bread, meat, and cheese than any human should consume: find out more about the Tour de Hamdel here.
Friends come and go like old books piled on shelves and long forgotten—even those friends that have faded from immediate memory tend to reemerge exactly when you need them. As a kid, I loved Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers—at least the movie and made-for-television versions. Eventually, I bought the book, a weighty tome bound in blue cloth, complete with a fancy ribbon to mark your spot. Shoved into my bookcase, The Three Musketeers languished for a half decade before I finally started reading it. I discovered that reading Dumas’ dry prose is no easy task and that some books are better left on shelves until the reader gains a certain degree of maturity. All this Dumas drama unfolded when I was 12—maybe now it’s time to pull The Three Musketeers out of retirement and try again. A story of loyalty, political intrigue, and romance seems perfect for a student finishing his sophomore year of college, a time when high school friendships continue to atrophy and newly forged college friendships come under fire.
As a high school senior, I found Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo a much more entertaining read than The Three Musketeers. After reading Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which uses Monte Cristo as a framing device and supernarrative structure, I tackled Dumas with renewed vigor. Although I still found his style stodgy, the text’s romantic leanings resonated with my late adolescent self.
This week, I returned to the Monte Cristo, at least in its sandwich form. At Hamdel, the Monte Cristo comes with turkey, ham, bacon, Swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato on a hero. Continue reading
