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A review by alicetheowl
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
4.0
I picked this up under several recommendations, and I'm not sorry I followed them.
However, I would caution anyone looking for a rip-roaring, hilarious tale. While there is a lot of humor sprinkled throughout, a lot of it is the dry, understated, sarcastic type. Anyone reading this (or listening to it on CD, as I did) and expecting to laugh every few minutes will be disappointed. It's not that kind of book.
It is the kind of book that has you thinking back on some of the humor, and realizing a lot of it is still rather funny, which is why this book is still in print after 122 years. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and the idea of a guy rowing furiously against a current to make some progress, only to look up and see he's still under the same bridge where he started, is still apt to produce a snicker or two. Some of the things that made me laugh had a sort of Monty Python quality to them, in that they were silly, and were presented with a completely straight face. I suppose it would be more correct to say that the things I like about Monty Python are like Three Men in a Boat.
There are a lot of funny little bits that I won't quote here, in hopes you go read it for yourself. There are also a lot of observations about the world, among them that people get cranky when speeding past each other in boats (which has translated nicely to the highway, and I couldn't help thinking about, as I listened to the book on my commute).
But the book also has some melancholy moments, some dry bits of history or anecdotes that aren't meant to be funny. Perhaps the humor works so well because it's not thrown at us nonstop, but doled out a little at a time, so we can appreciate it between the bits of apocrypha about how different (yet the same) sailing was over a century ago, for instance.
I enjoyed this read, and I hope people I know will read it soon, so I can talk to them about my favorite parts.
However, I would caution anyone looking for a rip-roaring, hilarious tale. While there is a lot of humor sprinkled throughout, a lot of it is the dry, understated, sarcastic type. Anyone reading this (or listening to it on CD, as I did) and expecting to laugh every few minutes will be disappointed. It's not that kind of book.
It is the kind of book that has you thinking back on some of the humor, and realizing a lot of it is still rather funny, which is why this book is still in print after 122 years. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and the idea of a guy rowing furiously against a current to make some progress, only to look up and see he's still under the same bridge where he started, is still apt to produce a snicker or two. Some of the things that made me laugh had a sort of Monty Python quality to them, in that they were silly, and were presented with a completely straight face. I suppose it would be more correct to say that the things I like about Monty Python are like Three Men in a Boat.
There are a lot of funny little bits that I won't quote here, in hopes you go read it for yourself. There are also a lot of observations about the world, among them that people get cranky when speeding past each other in boats (which has translated nicely to the highway, and I couldn't help thinking about, as I listened to the book on my commute).
But the book also has some melancholy moments, some dry bits of history or anecdotes that aren't meant to be funny. Perhaps the humor works so well because it's not thrown at us nonstop, but doled out a little at a time, so we can appreciate it between the bits of apocrypha about how different (yet the same) sailing was over a century ago, for instance.
I enjoyed this read, and I hope people I know will read it soon, so I can talk to them about my favorite parts.