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A review by katieinca
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
3.0
I've been meaning to read this ever since I first read[b:To Say Nothing of the Dog|77773|To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2)|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1436397341s/77773.jpg|696]. It feels surprisingly fresh for a 125 year old book. For example: "...had a fight with the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poor second." Wow that joke is even older than I realized. And various bits about things like the unreliability of weather forecasts, and reading about illnesses and deciding you have them all, feel like they could have come straight out of '80s standup.
The "oh, tra la, we are so witty and lazy" succession of anecdones wore on me after a bit - because that's really all this is. There is no plot to speak of, nor really any characters. Except maybe the dog. But then I took a side trip to Wikipedia and discovered that a) the author had in fact been penniless and worked real jobs and b) critics and actually posh folk REVILED the thing when it came out, deeming it as vulgar and ...common (*shudder*!). Once I knew that some people would have found the humor offensive that made it funnier. Such is life.
The "oh, tra la, we are so witty and lazy" succession of anecdones wore on me after a bit - because that's really all this is. There is no plot to speak of, nor really any characters. Except maybe the dog. But then I took a side trip to Wikipedia and discovered that a) the author had in fact been penniless and worked real jobs and b) critics and actually posh folk REVILED the thing when it came out, deeming it as vulgar and ...common (*shudder*!). Once I knew that some people would have found the humor offensive that made it funnier. Such is life.