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Title: Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)
Author: Jerome Jerome
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 231
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
J, and his two friends George and Harris, along with J’s dog Montmorency, all decide that they’ve been working too hard and they need a break. So they decide to go on a boating trip up the Thames.
What follows are the antics of 3 urban idiots, a dog who likes to fight and a travelogue. A very peculiar mix.
| My Thoughts: |
I thoroughly enjoyed parts of this. The parts I did not care for, or that bored me really, was where Jerome went into travelogue mode. Travel and I don’t get along real well. Scenery bores me to tears and while I hate cities, I still want to pave the planet and get rid of all that nasty “nature” stuff. So books that are travelogues ♪in disguise♪ don’t do it for me. At all. It is the reason I don’t ever plan on re-reading Dickens’ Pictures from Italy or his American Notes.
Thankfully, those bits were interspersed with the humorous bits. I read a short wiki article on Jerome K. Jerome and it would appear that he was the inspiration for such authors as P.G. Wodehouse. While not quite up to the Bertie Wooster level of helpless obliviousness, J and his companions are doing their best to achieve it. Part of it is that they are not independently wealthy and while they are pretty pathetic at their jobs (one of the friends works at a bank and pretty much sleeps all day there), at least they have jobs. They are the idle middle class as opposed to the idle rich. If you’ve ever read Wodehouse and like or dislike his brand of humor, then I can safely say you’ll feel the same way about Jerome.
Probably not a book that I’ll ever re-read but I am glad to have read it for the first time and to expand my knowledge base. I suspect I’ll be flashing back to this book whenever I read something by Wodehouse in the future.
★★★★☆
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I had been surprised at how little actual traveling seemed to happen in it, or at least how little description of that travel there was, but it sounds like that was a good thing in your case. I did find it very funny.
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I was pretty pleased that the travelogue side of things was as small as it was. Definitely better for me 😀
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I think the dog would interest me more than the people!
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Sadly, the dog featured very little. I think he had 2-3 instances of getting a paragraph or so
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Sounds interesting! I think I’ll have to pick this one up too — mostly as an expand the knowledge base thing, but also to better understand Connie Willis’ book when I re-read that one.
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This has got me to re-read that particular book by Willis. I didn’t even know her book was based on another book 🙂
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Her book is the only reason I know about this one, to be honest.
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I love to think of Nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour if only we will tune in. ~ George Washington Carver
Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better. ~ Albert Einstein
Ha, ha! I loved Jerome’s travelogue. Nature is the art of God and I equate it with silence and peace whereas concrete reminds me of noise and cities and people. I love nature …. it’s people I have to work on, lol!
You might want to give the audiobook read by Martin Jarvis a try. I usually dislike that format but he did a great job and it was an excellent re-read. This book is one of my favourites.
I’d also recommend The Diary of a Nobody if you haven’t read it. It’s not quite as good as Three Men but still hilarious!
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And I consign art to the same place as nature 😉
I intellectually accept that said things exist and that some people need them like air. But for me, I could do without. Or so I think anyway 😀
I’ve tried several times to get into audio books but it just never works…
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It’s a little gem, I loved it and I’ll re-read it multiple times in the future, I’m sure 🙂
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I was thinking about re-reads when I finished this and came to the conclusion that I think this was a one-off for me.
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Been looking forward to this since you posted that quotation…
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I found the movie version with tim curry from 1975’ish on youtube, so I hope to watch that in the next couple of weeks too. And this has made me want to re-read Willis’s book, so reading this has born all sorts of good fruit 😀
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Now I understand why you are preparing for the apocalypse’s aftermath with all those emergency meals: you are looking forward to the “paving over” of the world, and the removal of that “nasty nature stuff”!!!!
Your dastardly plot is now out in the open!!! 😂😎😆
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Rats, Foiled Again! *twirls mustache*
Dang that snoopy Maddalena and her deductive skills!
Hahahahaaa. Bookstooge’s villainy at last is revealed to the world at large! 😉
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Try it again in ten years time. I’ve read it 5 or 6 times and sometimes found it the funniest book I’ve ever read and sometimes found it a bit of a drag and I can never understand why.
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Considering how my tastes have changed in the last decade, I’m expecting more change in the next. So I might just try that 🙂
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The antics of three urban idiots hahaha I wonder if there’s a movie for this… Oh, there is! I could totally have imagined this as a movie hahah
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I plan on watching the movie at some point. Not sure if I’ll review it or not, but with Tim Curry I know I should be getting some good acting.
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Well I’m not really interested in travelogues in disguise, but this does sound somewhat fun.
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I’m hoping the movie is more of the funny stuff 🙂
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