Reading Rambo

This stupid book is now triumphantly finished, and I can attest to the following valuable lessons nestled within its pages:
1. The French suck.
2. They also hate Jews.
3. French peasants particularly suck.
4. Aristocrats are way awesome, especially the British ones.
5. Women looking/acting like children is super-hot. (wait — what?)
6. England is beautiful and free.
7. The only lower class British citizen worth mentioning is one who's a devoted servant.
8. The Scarlet Pimpernel is basically Tony Stark v. 1.0.
9. Baroness Orczy assumed her readers were really, really dumb.
10. They apparently were.

So I'm doing a TBR challenge that I found from Salon.com (it's over at Adam's Roof Beam Reader). This challenge is basically what made me create a book blog, so, y'know, blame that. But it's great, because at last count, I had appx. 150 unread books on my shelves. Yeah. I suck. But this challenge should eliminate at least 12 of them! I've stayed on track thus far by reading the easy ones, so I'm five down, seven to go, BUT I'm more than halfway through The Scarlet Pimpernel, so if I finish that soon I shall be WELL on my way to being ahead of the game.
Anyway. Scarlet Pimpernel. This book is ridiculous. RI-DICULOUS. And if you have no idea who he is and for some reason want to read the book and be surprised, read nothing more of this entry. Every brief summary I've read of the movie/book has immeeeediately said who he is, so I'm now regarding it as not-that-big-a-deal.
Okay, so this was published in 1905, which basically explains everything. 1905…