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Three Men in a Boat was meant to be a serious travel guide to the Thames, between Kingston and Oxford. Instead, it is one of the wittiest, funniest fictional jaunts down a river ever written. The three men are based on author Jerome and two of his friends. The dog "developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog."
TadAD: Imagine Bertie, Bingo and Barmie trying to organize a two-week boating expedition up the Thames. Conversely, imagine J., Harris and George trying to steal a cow creamer for their aunt. There you have it.
cbl_tn: If you enjoy humorous travel stories, you can't go wrong with either one of these books. Both books include descriptions of visits to the Hampton Court maze.
Mix of real information about the localities they pass through with humorous anecdotes about boating, health, life in general. Pretty light but fun. Some of the anecdotes are genuinely laugh out loud, they're very well told ( )
This has been on my plan to read list for a while and I am really glad I got to it. It's hard to describe, it's just comic in a particular British way that I find very amusing and it made me happy all the time I read it.
Three men and another of whom I cannot speak embark upon a watercraft to explore the upper reaches of the Thames. Jerome was poking fun at stuffy types who undertake adventures while believing bookish intelligence will adequately take the place of practical knowledge. I am happy to say I only read about these fools instead of adding to their number, since there are many other adventures in greater need of my supply.
It's fun to know that long before people googled illness symptoms on the Internet they were already doing it in medical books and coming to the same erroneous conclusions that gave their doctors the headache. Modern technology merely makes it more convenient. Similarly, road-rage has a precursor in 19th century riverboating, by the author's own confession: "The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and blood-thirsty when in a boat." We are following time-honoured tradition.
Strange tonal changes appear when the comedic adventure is rudely interrupted at unexpected times by poetical landscape descriptions or dramatically depicted historical scenes. That should suffice to recognize the flaw which every review of this novel is obligated to observe, thus earning my anticipated pay check. ( )
C'est la lecture de (l'excellent) [b:Sans parler du chien] qui m'a donné envie de lire trois hommes dans un bateau. Un bon moment : drôle et très imagé ( )
If you would like a book to take your mind off things for a bit, I recommend "Three Men in a Boat". It is a quick read and is still rather funny, even 100 years after it's publication. My favorite parts are when Jerome (not sure if I am calling him by his first or last name) goes off on a tangent that may have little or nothing to do with his trip or what he is even talking about at the time. It reminds me of a time when some friends and I were in a tavern and after a few hours of discussion, decided that we would take a tour out west, just for something to do. So, Edgar (whom we called "John"), Pile-on (real name is Norman), and I piled into my car with my pet turtle Norman (not to be confused with "Pile-on") and hit the road. After several hours, we became somewhat confused as to where we were, so after some arguments we decided to stop and ask directions at a bar we were passing. We went in and realized that we were in the very place we had left hours before. We decided to raise a toast to our adventure, but wished we had brought a camera. Maybe I digress from this review. I checked online to see if Jerome (see note above) was touring, but could find no info. But, if you want a quiet laugh, pick up a copy of this book. ( )
There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency.
Quotations
I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It's my energetic nature. I can't help it.
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.
...George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet us there.
The case was becoming serious. It was now past midnight. The hotels at Shiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round, knocking up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know if they let apartments! George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house. But then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back and refuses to lock us up!"
We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen. Besides, we did not want to overdo the thing and get six months.
He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely.
That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.
Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any appreciable reformation in rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smilies; and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handy place to run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in London. Parliament generally rushed off to Reading whenever there was a plague on at Westminster; and, in 1625, the Law followed suit, and all the courts were held at Reading. It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament.
Last words
And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the window, peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence with the toast.
Three Men in a Boat was meant to be a serious travel guide to the Thames, between Kingston and Oxford. Instead, it is one of the wittiest, funniest fictional jaunts down a river ever written. The three men are based on author Jerome and two of his friends. The dog "developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog."
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Trois hommes et un chien. Bienvenue en Absurdie! It is so British.
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