All About Books discussion

Week 25 brings us Three Men in a Boat (1889) by Jerome K. Jerome.

from the article:

"Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), is one of the comic gems in the English language. An accidental one, too. "I did not intend to write a funny book, at first," said its author. (...) Ostensibly the tale of three city clerks on a boating trip, an account that sometimes masquerades, against its will, as a travel guide, Three Men in a Boat hovers somewhere between a shaggy-dog story and episodes of late-Victorian farce. (...)

Jerome's themes are airily inconsequential and supremely English – boats, fishing, the weather, the atrocities of English food and the vicissitudes of suburban life – perfectly pitched in a light comic prose whose influence can be detected later in the work of, among many, P.G. WodehouseP.G. Wodehouse, James Thurber, and Nick Hornby."

read the full article here

This is one I have been meaning to get to but haven't yet...

Do I dare to tell? I had never even heard of it before. ;)

Jenny wrote: "Do I dare to tell? I had never even heard of it before. ;)"

Really? It was one of the "classic read" in my family ever since I was a kid!
I have to admit though that I didn't like it that much: funny in bits but on the whole I think it is clear it wasn't meant as a novel at the beginning, but as a turistic guide!!!

I think it is a book that is easily quoted: some pages are really great, as the one on illness and hypochondria

Must have read it ten times over the years. One of the great classics of humorous writing. Usually think it's very funny, but it can see that it depends on one's mood. And whether one likes farce. Laughing now thinking about an incident with a cheese! Very English humour, like Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, and P G Wodehouse. If you like it, then Three Men on the Bummel, the follow-up, when they go walking in Europe, is very good. Many misinterpretations because of language.

One of my favourite favourite books. Love the tin of pineapple incident.