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3.17 AVERAGE
3.17 AVERAGE
I read the children's abridged version which I enjoyed the pace of the book more. This book is the ramblings of a man left alone on an island. I wish I would have read this as a child as I may have been more inclined to enjoy it. But as an adult it starts with a rich kid who leaves his father. He gets captured and made a slave. Escapes with the help of another slave boy, he decides to immediately sell the slave that helped him. He becomes a successful business man for some time,and then again decides to go to sea. This time his ship crashes and he winds up on an island. This is where the majority of the book takes place and in excruciating detail every minutiae of his life and preponderance is shared. Basically, he claims the island and domesticates the animals. Twenty some years later, cannibals happen upon the island. He saves one of the intended food source, and instantly makes him into one of his personal slaves. Lots more encounters, and ruminations, and eventually with the help of a mutinied captain he makes his way back to England slave in tow. He wanders about aimless for like 15o pages with no rhyme or reason, then toward the end of the book, it says he has a wife and three kids. You know, his wife is dying, so he abandons the family and takes off again.
I disliked the main character immensely. It was the mindset of the time period, but I just disliked him. If you have to read it, read the abridged children's version. You won't be missing much.
I disliked the main character immensely. It was the mindset of the time period, but I just disliked him. If you have to read it, read the abridged children's version. You won't be missing much.
To be honest, I read this abridged version because I'm reading the original and three chapters in I massively dislike the main character and find the book inanely boring. In this version, the main character is much easier to like.
I had far more fun with this than I anticipated! It's like a Dorian Grey-esque character study with the backdrop of a survivalist adventure. Definitely worth the read even if you know the story.
It was enjoyable; it did tend to get boring in multiple places, and the MC would rave about random things for pages. Other than that, it was interesting.
I loved the detailed descriptions of everything. I would like to do a more in-depth reading on race and colonialism. What was Friday's real name, I wonder? Robinson Crusoe surely never thought to ask.
I love the narration of Simon Vance and found that my library had that audio version available, so I knew that was the way to go for this castaway story and listening certainly enhanced the book and kept it from bogging down in the slower parts. Robinson Crusoe was a re-read for me, but it has been at least 40 years between reads, so it was almost like a new experience. I liked it quite a bit and found it overall to be more engaging than [b:A Journal of the Plague Year|46730|A Journal of the Plague Year|Daniel Defoe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388365957s/46730.jpg|12755437] by Defoe which I recently finished. There is more personal connection to be made with the narrator in this adventure tale also told in journal style and the stories have more life to them, pulling the reader into the story. The acceptance of slavery as matter of course always makes a classic read a bit more difficult to take, but is also informative as to how entrenched these attitudes were in the time and how difficult they have been to overcome. Crusoe’s treatment of Friday and Defoe’s portrayal of him are hard to take from a 21st Century point of view, but the book can still be enjoyed as a classic of the adventure genre.
Even if you try, to take into account the time in which the work was written, it is still unsettling to follow a protagonist who writes about non-Europeans with such self-evident superiority, as if they were wild animals. On the other hand, he talks about the cruelty of the Spaniards towards South Americans and how he had no right to condemn tribes for their cannibalism.
That being said, the tales of his adventures are still worth reading today and certainly would have been fascinating to 18th-century Europeans. For my taste, he is a bit too lucky in his travels and everything works out too smoothly, although the book is aware of that. The accounts of the time after the main plot don't add to the overall work and Defoe could have kept it a bit shorter.
Even though the book has aged poorly, it is a classic that you should read.
That being said, the tales of his adventures are still worth reading today and certainly would have been fascinating to 18th-century Europeans. For my taste, he is a bit too lucky in his travels and everything works out too smoothly, although the book is aware of that. The accounts of the time after the main plot don't add to the overall work and Defoe could have kept it a bit shorter.
Even though the book has aged poorly, it is a classic that you should read.
DNF. I read it years ago in university when it was required reading for one of my literature courses. I couldn't get through it this time, I found it to be super trite. I might try again in the future when my TBR isn't so long. For now, a DNF.
