Novel Travels: Queen Margot

In 2007 my husband and I flew to Arizona to visit his family and to attend the Fiesta Bowl. This was the infamous game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the Boise State Broncos. For three quarters I was bored and wishing I had brought my book, Queen Margot. It's the only time I recall wanting to read while attending a football game. In the fourth quarter, things got exciting, really exciting. Goes down in history exciting. A good game from the fourth quarter on with an unexpected finish. However, I digress.

Honestly, Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas is not a good travel book. For one thing, it is huge and for another, it deviates from history and does not have special insight into the people or an area of France--things which I prefer to find in literature I read while traveling. What it did do was drive me to read about the real Margurite de Valois, queen of France and Navarre in the late 16th century, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Huguenots in Paris after her marriage to Henry de Bourbon. Queen Margot had me googling Navarre and Huguenots making this book more educational for me, as if I were back in high school and preparing for an essay test. I would have failed that test though, because I found the conspiracies and plot twists of who was spying on who (whom?) impossible to keep up with, even after I saw the movie.

I'd like to read more by Dumas. Maybe I'll read The Three Musketeers when I return to France, someday.