Unlike the Musketeers he found it unsufferable as a kid, could only finish it by constantly skipping ahead.

His fascination with the novel came after he was commissionned to abridge it and realised a hundred pages in that it just didn't work. He investigated why it didn't work, and the result was that essay in "Supermen".

I don't think (I could be mistaken) it's Eco himself but rather another commentator, quoting Eco's essay who said that getting frustrated at the lengths and redundancies and giving yourself the permission/pleasure to skip parts is part of the experience of reading Monte Cristo.

I personally enjoyed Monte Cristo when I reread it a few years ago (though much like Eco does in the end. And in my case nostalgia played a part, that and wanting to understand why I enjoy books like that - or WOT - despite objectively finding very little literary quality to them). I agree it's not a very good choice for a book club, though. It's the sort of book about which you can sum up your thoughts in a few sentences at most, not the sort that spark much discussion.

Paradoxically given its literary quality, it's the sort of novel that spark mostly platitudes from everyone except a few scholars, like Schopp (a French Dumas scholar) or Eco. It's actually more interesting to comment what on they have to say about Monte Cristo than comment on the book itself.