Not everyone has had the privilege of being raised by the landed gentry. Good day sir.

Ok I’ll stop being an obnoxious dick now. First of all I just want to agree that I enjoyed the prose/flow of the Count of Monte Cristo. It was enjoyable to read but as a story I felt that it had some major issues and seemed to go on and on. Which I guess makes sense given it was serialized.

I think you’re vastly overestimating how much the average person reads, and what sorts of books they read. In my experience, very few people have experience reading anything more challenging/obscure than something like 1984 or To Kill a Mockingbird, which we were forced to read in high school and hated.

I think a good amount of people (myself for example) eventually fall back in love with reading and realize those books are really good, but in my experience the majority of reading most people do is non-fiction. I’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo because I quite like fiction and because I became aware of the story in high school through the movie, but reading a 1200 page revenge novel written almost 200 years ago is so far outside the interest of basically anyone I know.

I’m sure more literary sorts of people have had different experiences but I think my experience is a decent indicator. I grew up with privilege and have nerdy interests, so interacting with people who had the time/interest/access to literature was not unusual.

Even as a big fantasy/sci-fi reader Jules Verne hardly seems to be a “must read” these days. Certainly a name that is known and mentioned but not at the top of people’s recommendations. But I generally hate all the fantasy/sci-fi I see recommended so maybe it’s time to read some Verne.