This is slightly better than The Adventures of Mark Twain. Still, I think Mr. Twain isn't all that great. ( )

This book is writeen by Mark Twain, who write Tom Sawyer.
The main character of this book is Huckleberry Finn who don't like wear new clothes and be good all time.
One day, his father take him away to live in the woods. HIs father isn't very good father, so he hit son.And Huckleberry decided to escape him.
I can't understand this book very much, but I think that true friendship is very important to life. ( )

I believe that the Notice provided at the very onset of the book (Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.) pretty much sums of the book.

I did not find a motive, a moral, nor a plot but nevertheless found the book somewhat enjoyable. I kept wanting the book to get where it was going, only to remind myself that it wasn't going anywhere and like a raft on the Mississippi I was just going to have to sit back and enjoy the ride.

I cringed at the racism in the book, but understood that's just the way it was back then and was fascinated by how people could have once (and sadly some still) think the way they did.

Overall the book was just too slow-paced for me, but I found myself several times thinking that I needed (and should have previously) read Tom Sawyer. ( )

Of all possible endings for 'Huckleberry Finn,' only one would have made any sense. My own, uneducated guess is that Mark Twain didn't want (or didn't have the courage) to go that way, so he tacked on a resolution clapped together from maudlin slop and preposterous coincidence. When I put my mean eye on 'Huck Finn,' I can literally see where the fix was thrown in. It couldn't be clearer had the author drawn a line across the page at the end of Chapter 31.

Thus what might have been one of the world's great tragedies became one of the world's great pieces of kiddie lit. The world declares it so and so it will remain, which is some consolation because the book as Twain published it is a tragedy of a sort.

The world needs kiddie lit, whether adults enjoy it or not. That's why 'Huckleberry Finn' will outlast ten thousand writers like me. It will survive all attempts to pry it out of its place in the canon and future generations will have to suffer that awful resolution just as I did. Most people don't notice anything wrong with it, anyway.

The upshot is that 'Huckleberry Finn' is eternal: it is a thing that will be with us always, like warfare or venereal disease. And if (unlike most Americans) you've read all of Mark Twain, you know the old geezer would have chortled at and cherished that thought.

When I was a lad of nine years, I'd have rated 'Huckleberry Finn' at six stars, my logic then being that five were not enough. Today, 61 years old, getting on toward the end of a hard life, I give it three stars for the three quarters of the book that are truly superb. The rest of it is goo. ( )

Really enjoyed reading this after tackling a couple of George Eliot classics this was a nice break. I haven't laughed out loud to many books but this one got me eventually. Capable readers from age 11 or so would enjoy it (not that I've managed to convince any to finish it). ( )