The Swiss Family Robinson

By page 74 it was still just a laundry list of each day's discovery of new items from the island, or items recovered from the wrecked ship. No plot, no adventure. This may have passed my standards for a good read (probably not), but the thing that made me press the delete button on the Kindle with particular fury was the way in which Father Robinson was so damn knowledgable about every aspect of "savage" lifestyles and survival tactics. I mean, what middle-class clergyman from the Alps knows the exact proper way to halve a tropical gourd? Is it likely that this late-18th century minister from a mountain climate knows that a particular tree from a tropical climate can be used for making sewing thread, and also exactly how to make a show more navigable boat out of 8 barrels and a bunch of wrecked plywood? It strained the very limits of my suspended disbelief to the snapping point, and snap they did.

Delete from Kindle. show less

This classic didn't quite hold up to the passage of time. The plot was lacking and everything that the family faced they were able to overcome with seemingly little to no effort. Thankfully the father (who was the narrator) was so well versed in everything from zoology to carpentry, hunting to botany, everything in between that everything was able to be spelled out for his children and so that they could successfully survive on the island they were stranded on. I'm not saying they couldn't have survived without this knowledge, I'm just saying that it all felt a bit forced and the vast spread of knowledge felt too convenient. In addition, it drove me crazy that the narrator never gave the wife/mother's name and that she was only referred show more to as "the mother" or "my wife". She seemed to play such a small role in keeping the house and cooking for her 4 male children and husband that she could have been taken out entirely and it would have made no difference to the story. All the children were given names and played a role at some point, so why couldn't she? I guess she did have "magic bag" that was full of seeds that they ended up planting, but that's about the only significant role I could see of her. Unfortunately this didn't hold up to the passage of time. :( show less

Have you ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books and wished for more of the frontier DIY bits and less of the annoying family sweetness? Well, this is that book, with more old-time engineering and a whole lot more hunting. If this book were a magazine it'd be the love child of Popular Mechanics and Field & Stream, and for some people that's perfect. To me, it felt like a nature documentary: it got off to a fascinating start but before long it was just animals killing animals, over and over. The only thing that got me through the last two out of nine sections of the audiobook was an urgent knitting project. Then at the end the story flashes forward ten years, which is a bit more bearable. Well, that's over with.

Pretty much what you might expect. A mother, father and four sons shipwrecked on what they claim is an island although no one ever bothers to circumnavigate it so we'll never know for sure :) .
Its quite Vernian, in that it spends a lot of time giving mildly interesting and often incorrect information on plants and animals. Usually involving how best to kill them ;) .
I did like the unintentional irony. Sometimes the father would get worried at how callous the sons are getting while praising there killing powers the rest of them time. At one point someone asks why god would created something as vicious as a wild cat, he says while holding up the cat which he just killed :(. There are also some sights you can't unpicture, a small child show more clubbing penguins to death is the sort of thing that will stay with you.
Anyway there just isn't enough here to separate it from the hundreds of other shipwreck stories so i deducted a star... then i put the star back because of the humour.
There's some genuine warm family teasing here and the parents in particular can be quite sarcastic. However in the end i took the star off once more because of the geography.
Sorry but if you have a hippo, kangaroo and capybara in the same small piece of land something has gone horribly wrong, or your at the zoo :lol .

Maybe i should make a shelf for books only worth reading if your immortal :) . show less

This mostly just annoyed me that I'd chosen to read it over its basis, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I blame Disney World.

"But in reality, the more there was to do the better. I never ceased contriving fresh improvements, being fully aware of the importance of constant employment as a means of strengthening and maintaining the health of mind and body. This, indeed, with a consciousness of continual progress toward a desirable end, is found to constitute the main element of happiness."

^The moral of Wyss's story, with which I agree, but am incapable of appreciating in such a fantastically providential manner. I think I've always been too old for this amount of good fortune.

DNF. I just couldn't continue with this book. On every second page the boys are killing another animal, shooting with guns. Not even out of necessity for food, just because they were scared or so. They are all very trigger happy. The father is also always preaching and the life lessons are really on the nose. The idea of a family stranded on an island, building a tree house and having adventures, is such a good idea, but the way it is written in this book is really not for me.

I really enjoyed this book. I found all the details about how they survived and built a life on this deserted island fascinating. My only complaint is that the middle section went on a little too long with unnecessary events and findings. However, before I got too distracted and discontented, Wyss picked up the story again and brought it to a very satisfying ending.