Where I (Guiltily) Read Muttketeer

I've finished twenty more children's books this week.

That brings me up to 383 out of 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.

I'm in a Yahoo group where members are trying to read all 1001 children's books. 

I'm still, slowly, reading away in Three Musketeers, one of the books on the list. It is quite daunting for me to read this book. I know very little about French history. The French culture of the time confuses me. (Apparently, it was the norm for men to have a wife and a mistress.) I know almost nothing about fighting or swordplay. Luckily for me, I'm attempting to read this on my iPad, with an in-house dictionary. Very helpful.

I was discussing my difficulties with the book after a library board meeting in my town. A fellow library board member and friend is author Bill Crider, known best for his grownup mysteries and westerns. Little did I know that Bill Crider has also written Muttketeer. Muttketeer is one of the Wishbone series, a dog version of The Three Musketeers. I promptly ordered a copy. It arrived in the mail yesterday.

Reading Muttketeer might enable me to follow TTM a little better. Chapter Two includes Wishbone's Official Dictionary of Fencing and French Words You May Not Know. Chapter Three provides some useful notes about the political situation. Here's a bit:

"In those days, the city was torn between two opposing leaders, and each one wanted all the power for himself. One was Cardinal Richelieu, a man of great importance in the Church. The other one was King Louis XIII, who was served most loyally by his personal guards---the highly trained and skilled musketeers. The musketeers, of course were the Good Guys, and D'Artagnan was going to join their ranks...."

I suppose reading Muttketeer along with The Three Musketeers is a bit like using Cliff's Notes. It digests the text into manageable chunks for children and people like me, unfamiliar with the essential story.

I must say that I feel guilty, as if I am doing something wrong by doing this. I feel like I'm somehow taking the easy way out or cheating somehow. Am I? Has anyone else found ways to ease the way through classics?

What is the Sunday Salon?

Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book.