Read to the end for a post about boarding positions.

This past weekend I was traveling and found myself nose-deep in my Kindle. I am still reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which I've already dubbed "The longest book" because, well, it is.

It's 1200+ pages. It's over 110 chapters long. And I'm 98% done with it.

Back in June when I wrote about this endeavor, I estimated I would finish it last year. That didn't happen. Between life and other things occupying my free time, I did not read as much as I would've liked. As such, it's only now at the end of February / beginning of March that I'm reaching the final parts of this book.

I've never read Monte Cristo before and it's a fascinating story in both how revenge overtakes a person's mission in life and also fascinating in how a person could write a book that is so damn long. At times Dumas has me enthralled and in other chapters I'm bored as all get out. I've stuck with it because I want to read the whole book and not skim past parts I don't like. Plus, my luck I'll miss a key point in some of those chapters.

But my Kindle shows me at 98% left and about one hour & twenty two minutes of reading time remaining. That is one thing I do love about the Kindle. It learns your reading speed and gives you those metrics per chapter or for the whole book. It's an enormous help when I begin a chapter to know when I'll be at the next stopping point.

When I do finally reach the end and mark it as 'read' on Goodreads, The StoryGraph, and Hardcover (yes, I'm currently using 3 book tracking sites in my attempts to leave GoodReads), I'm going to first enjoy the accomplishment and then I may go "school required reading" style and watch the movie. I've seen there's a bunch of film adaptations of Monte Cristo so I have to figure out which will be entertaining, not six hours long, and most true to the source material.

One note I want to make is if you own any eReader or just want to read a book on your phone, consider Project Gutenberg to get classic and out-of-copyright books for free. It's criminal to pay for ebook versions of classics when they should be free. Project Gutenberg has over 70,000 public domain books available. And if that isn't enough, remember your library has ebooks for free; you simply need a library card.

Last year I completed only two books because of my choice to read this long book. This year, with the end coming in the next week or so, I'm excited to read something quick and short; say 300 pages? That's crazy-brief in my world these days.

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Thanks for reading. Now, onto the rest of today's issue.