Announcing the 2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along

This is the official sign-up post for the 2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along! You’re invited to join me in reading one of the great adventure series of all time, the D’Artagnan Romances. Each chapter averages about 8 pages, so you should only have to dedicate 10 to 15 minutes a day to reading. And if you get behind, you can catch up pretty easily.

Wait, what? 2022? It’s only October, so why am I already announcing next year’s chapter-a-day read-along? There’s a special reason, and it goes all the way back to last December. I’ve been hinting at a special announcement this year, and I’m finally happy to say that today is the day, and it all has to do with our next book in this year’s read-along. Last year when I announced the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, I said that there were three reasons I chose The Three Musketeers:

first, it’s a book I can’t get enough of, and I want to encourage others to read it; second, so many people enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo during our 2019 read-along that I thought another Dumas book would be appreciated; and I am going to keep the third reason to myself for the time being and reveal it sometime before we start reading it in late October.

Well, October is here, and we are less than three weeks from beginning The Three Musketeers. So it’s time to share with you not only the final reason I chose The Three Musketeers, but also why it was chosen to be the final book of the year. You see, it’s not just the final book of the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along, but it’s also the first book of the 2021-2022 Chapter-a-Day Read-along! Starting October 25, 2021, we will be starting on the grand adventure of reading the entire Musketeer series, which will take us the rest of this year and all of next year.

While almost everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers, not nearly as many people know that Alexandre Dumas continued the story of D’Artagnan in two sequels, Twenty Years After and the multi-volume The Vicomte de Bragelonne (which includes The Man in the Iron Mask). By starting The Three Musketeers on October 25, 2021, and reading a chapter a day, we will finish the entire D’Artagnan series by December 31, 2022.

If you’re currently participating in the 2021 read-along, I hope your reading of The Three Musketeers will be so enjoyable that you will want to continue the series next year. If you’re not yet participating in this year’s read-along, I invite you to join us for The Three Musketeers starting on October 25, as a beginning to next year’s read-along.

Why Read the D’Artagnan Series?

The D’Artagnan series is a top-rate work of action-oriented historical fiction with plenty of witty dialogue and surprising plot revelations. Though written between 1844 and 1850, the books move along with the pace of a modern novel, all dialogue and action. Based on the life of a real musketeer, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan, the series showcases Dumas’ ability to immerse the reader in the life of 17th century France and England. While The Count of Monte Cristo remain’s the author’s masterpiece, the D’Artagnan series is still one great, rollicking tale, and well worthy of a long, slow read.

The D’Artagnan stories were all originally published serially. The Three Musketeers was published between March and July of 1844; Twenty Years After was published between January and August of 1845; and the huge final novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne was published across more than two years, between October 1847 and January 1850.

The Three Musketeers is one of my desert island books. I’ve read it many times over the years, and I never tire of it. The rest of the series builds on the adventures and escapades of D’Artagnan and his musketeer companions. I love hanging out not only with D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, but also with their servants Planchet, Mousqueton, Grimaud, and Bazin. Set between 1625 and 1673, the story is filled with monarchs and maidens, swordplay and society, history and humor, romance and rebellion. The books are the perfect daily dose of action and intrigue, and should make for a great chapter-a-day experience.

How to Participate

1. Leave a comment on this post telling everyone that you’ll be reading along and why.
2. Get copies of the different books in the series (see below for details).
3. Download the 2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter a Day Read-along Schedule.
4. Commit to reading a chapter a day, starting on October 25, 2021 (or January 1, 2022 if you’ve recently read The Three Musketeers). If you get behind or race ahead, no worries. Life happens.
5. It’s purely optional, but I encourage you to join me in posting a quote each day on Facebook or Twitter. I will be posting on both, using the hashtag #musketeerreadalong. My Twitter and Facebook posts will stay on track with the reading schedule, and I only ask that you please respect the reading experience of those who may not know the full story. In other words, no spoilers!
6. Please feel free to post the Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-Along graphic on your website or blog to spread the word.
7. Subscribe to One Catholic Life so you don’t miss any read-along posts throughout the year. You can get updates via email by using the form in the right-hand sidebar.

Reading Schedule

As I mentioned above, to read all the books in the series in a chapter a day, it will take more than a full year. We will read The Three Musketeers in the closing months of 2021 and the sequels in 2022. Here is a broad outline of the reading schedule:

• The Three Musketeers: October 25, 2021 to December 31, 2021
• Twenty Years After: January 1, 2022 to April 7, 2022
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne: April 8, 2022 to December 31, 2022

As you can tell by the looking at the schedule, The Vicomte de Bragelonne is a huge novel. It is so long, in fact, that it has been divided into several volumes, but not always in the same way. Sometimes it is split into three volumes, sometimes four, and sometimes even five or six volumes. Because of this, creating the reading schedule proved to be a bit of a challenge. To keep things simple, I created the schedule using the two most available sources of the novel in English: the Oxford World’s Classics paperback/Kindle editions (which are also available as audiobooks from Audible) and the free online editions from Project Gutenberg (which are also available as a free audiobooks from Librivox).

The Oxford’s World’s Classics edition of the series is an excellent translation and is readily available, so I used that as the foundation for the schedule, adapting it to the public domain version on Project Gutenberg. I tried to be as careful as possible to match the two different versions so that we are all reading the same text on the same day, but my apologies in advance if there are errors.

There are many different editions out there, so it can be quite confusing to get the right ones. To make it easier for you, I have provided direct links to the paperbacks on the Oxford World Classics website, as well as links to their Kindle editions on Amazon (as usual, Amazon links are affiliate links). I have also provided direct links to the free online editions at Project Gutenberg.

Here is the series as published by Oxford World’s Classics:

• The Three Musketeers – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• Twenty Years After – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• Louise de la Vallière – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)
• The Man in the Iron Mask – click here for the Kindle edition (affiliate link)

And here is the series as available online for free at Project Gutenberg:

• The Three Musketeers
• Twenty Years After
• The Vicomte de Bragelonne
• Ten Years Later
• Louise de la Vallière
• The Man in the Iron Mask

Special Note

While this is called the Musketeer Chapter-a-day Read-along, there are many other characters who take center stage throughout the series. There are even times when the musketeers are not heard from for quite a while. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is helpful to know before starting the series so that you know what to expect.

Conclusion

Finally, I want to thank everyone who is participating in this year’s read-along and all those who have participated in the past. Reading a book in a chapter a day is great way to tackle an otherwise intimidating classic, but it is so much more fun to do it with others. Seeing the quotes you post on Twitter is motivational and inspirational, and I look forward to them each day. I can’t wait to read the D’Artagnan books with you!

2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter-a-Day Read-along Schedule

Here is the read-along schedule, and you can also download it as a pdf here: Nick’s 2021-2022 Musketeer Chapter a Day Read-along Schedule