the corner office

I've not read any fiction for some time. But at the beginning of the month I went on a work jolly, and on the plane I needed something to read, and one of the only books available on Google Play on my tablet was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

And so I read it, for the first time in nearly 30 years. And I really enjoyed it. It's a thoroughly immoral book, which would be better termed The Three Gigolos, given that everything pretty much boils down to the musketeers selling their favours to rich old ladies for money. But it's a great read.

That got me hitched on Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo followed. Great book. Best revenge tale ever. What a bad-ass.

I decided that I'd keep reading Alexandre Dumas books. The sequel to the Three Musketeers is Twenty Years After. Google has not yet run their OCR magic on their version of the book, so their copy is just the original pages; not so easy on my ageing eyes. I went looking for alternatives.

This has added a whole new dilemma to my life. To wit, the fact that these books were translated, and the translation can make a difference to the book. For example, this is one of the first paragraphs from the Project Gutenberg version, which appears to be from a 1910 translation, and is also the version you find for free on the Kindle:

It was, alas! the ghost of former greatness. France enfeebled, the authority of her sovereign contemned, her nobles returning to their former turbulence and insolence, her enemies within her frontiers--all proved the great Richelieu no longer in existence.

This is from an 1846 translation from a bloke named William Barrow

And, truly, it was in effect only the shade of that great man. France enfeebled, the enemy within the frontiers--everything, in short, declared that Richelieu himself was no longer there.

And yet another version, translated by some equally forgotten fellow named William Robson in 1856, which is one of the freebies from Google books:

Alas! It was but too truly only the shade of the great man. France sunk to a state of weakness, the authority of the King unrecognized, the nobles again powerful and turbulent, the enemy once more within the frontiers,--everything denoted that Richelieu was no more.

The final version reads best to me, and that's the version I'm going with. But I could do without these sorts of problems. What if I'd not discovered this version, and settled for one of the others? What if my versions of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo aren't the best, and I could've enjoyed my past month's reading even more?