Three Men in a Boat (Fingerprint Classics)

Did you ever want to do a bit of an unusual thing with some friends as a young person? Don't forget to take along Montmorency the dog when rowing up the Thames to Oxford; seeing quaint towns; imagining bloody Hastings in 1066; the floods, the marching armies; the island where King John was separated from his army and forced to sign the Magna Charta by his frightened, but strength in numbers, nobles; good inns or sleeping rough or on the cramped boat; a huge fish rumoured to have been caught by several locals; rain and heat; calming annoying hungry friendly clever dog; boat races; flirting; England, its people and history along the Thames in the late 1890s; a true story reprinted from the Jerome K. Jerome original. Do enjoy your time in the boat with your four companions, escaping daily life.

Ours is a world filled with Facebook friends and e-mail contact lists. We bombard one another with an alphabet soup of abbreviated sentiments in pithy 140-character Tweets. With the push of a button we can download any book we want from the Internet and the fastest growing category in online literary magazines is "Flash Fiction" where no piece is allowed to exceed 300 words. In just a matter of hours jumbo jets can deliver us to exotic vacation destinations all over the globe, and when we get to where we're going we bring our i-Pads with us to the pool. We're wired, we're on the go and above all else we're in a hurry.So how is it I so greatly enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, Jerome Jerome's hilarious account of his fortnight holiday in Victorian England? How could this guy's rowboat journey from Kingston to Oxford on the Thames with his two good buddies, a Fox Terrier and a droll, understated sense of humor that requires two or three background passages of Flash Fiction length just to get the reader to any given punch line ring so true? Well, it's really REALLY funny for one thing. You just need to relax and go with the flow (no pun intended). Even we Americans who will miss much of the historical and societal references and haven't ever seen the Thames other than in photographs of Tower Bridge in London will appreciate the humor. For another thing the book is a well written travelogue of a picturesque piece of the planet in a bygone era that can still be seen so long as you squint past some Motorways and a few Tesco Supermarkets. I had fun tracking Jerome's progress on Google Earth and was heartened to find bits of the present-day landscape coinciding at least vaguely with his beautifully descriptive prose.But perhaps the best thing about this quirky little book is that in spite of all the differences between Victorian England and our fast paced Information Age it holds up astoundingly well. Three Men in a Boat was a hot seller when first published in 1889 and hasn't ever gone out of print. It was funny when first written, it's funny today and, I suspect it will be funny 100 years from now because the humor translates on such an essentially human level.The relationship between the three guy buddies - the banter and the teasing - is thoroughly recognizable. You can picture the same three buddies stumbling about on a camping trip or out on the golf course today. The opening riff where the narrator talks about how the marketing blurb on the bottle of liver pills took him to a museum library and eventually to a full catalogue of human ailments (which led him to believe he had symptoms of just about every disease known to science) is particularly hilarious. Anyone who has ever scrolled through WebMd will readily relate.And to all of you reading this post at the office, here's a quote from the book that typifies the humor and just might apply to your present circumstances:"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."I highly recommend this book. I give it 4 American stars and 5 British stars because I know just enough about my wife's home country to believe that anyone from Jolly Old England will almost certainly find themselves frequently piddling in their britches over it. Bring it with you this summer on vacation. It is absolutely the perfect book to read after a day of too much sun and an evening of a few too many margaritas!

A classic I found. Just a rambling set of stories in the 19th century in England but silly and enjoyable.

So many of the other reviews I had read on this book said it was very funny... And I sort of took that with a grain of salt. Because many of the things others think is funny I don't think is funny at all. Now I will grant the very BEGINNING of this book WAS actually funny. The lead character was saying how he had every disease in the book, based on symptoms. You know how you can go to Google these days to look up symptoms of some disease or condition, and you may actually have those very common symptoms? And then certain people may actually believe they have it? Well it appears long ago people were doing the same thing - except it was with info printed up on paper!Of course after that the story continued. I had run across a few other very brief scenes I had thought was funny - but they were rare. And between these I recall a very bizarre scene with a woman (she was a landlord if I recall correctly) that was just puzzling. As in bizarre.But these three men decide to take a boat trip on a river. They are not exactly young anymore mind you. And they have a dog. To be honest I am unsure why the dog is even mentioned in the title as he is hardly written about at all. The majority of the story is the three men.And they go on this adventure that lasts a fortnight (2 weeks). And yes, there are some odd terms in here I had to go Google. Like what "punting" was (its a long boat with a flat bottom you steer with a long pole) and at the end there was a "double sculling skiff" that the guys definitely did not want. Yeah, I had to go look that up too.But basically this is a travel story with many misadventures. You can read the descriptions of the sights along the river and learn the crazy things they got into. A few were about the things they ate. And where they slept (including fighting with tents). Or how the dog had to fight with the teapot. Or how they used ancient maps so their destination was all wrong. Lots of it is little minor stuff really but it eats up the pages... Often they are wondering around in the dark near the river bank trying to find the boat.I found the story a tad slow... Nothing major actually happens. Its just a bunch of small everyday things. And as I said its not funny...Took me a few days to get through this as I was trying to read stuff with more action in between.The most bizarre thing in here is probably how the women were scared of the steam boats? But unfortunately the book doesn't explain why they were scared of them..I guess it was common knowledge at the time. Was it because it was something new? Or were the steamboats seen as an actual real threat?? I have no idea.One other thing in here that confused me the most was near the end where the men were fighting with the "sculls" and "bows" in rowing. Something about the length? I did not understand it at all. I think it was supposed to be funny but if you are confused by the terms of what they are trying to describe, well, the humor is lost... I know in naval terms the bow is the front of a ship. But what is a scull? And what does this have to do with a length of something? I guess they mean oars? But the book never mentioned oars. But are not all oars the same length? No idea.So I looked up the word "scull" and it means "small oars"??Well that does not help with understanding that scene... From what I have seen in movies with rowboats you don't have oars at the bow. The people who use oars are more in the middle of the boat?? So yes, very perplexing!But there are way more incidents in this story than the few things I have mentioned in here. The guys do a ton of stuff. All quite ordinary actually. Including grocery shopping and cooking and playing a few instruments. They meet other people. They do stuff and have conversations. But its all common everyday things.

My kids enjoyed this so much when we got it from the library that I decided we needed to own a copy. It's perfect for car trips and relaxing at bedtime.This is a very well-produced reading of a classic light read. It doesn't seem to have the extremely loud and quiet parts that make some audiobooks difficult to hear in the car or with ambient noise.The narrator's voice is well-suited to the story, the kind of voice that would also be good as Bertie Wooster.The production is rounded out with little musical passages between each chapter.