Three Men in a Boat
Ratings126
Average rating3.9
The biggest problem I had with this book was its entirely humourless tone.
Gave up 75 pages in. I enjoyed the writing but found the contents to be overbearing and shallow, the jokes far too slapstick. On the whole quite a heavy reading experience with regards to it's value
Very amusing :-D
With parts that weren't funny, like the story of the poor woman, or the dark forest. Nevertheless, enjoyable.
This is a lazy saturday afternoon read. The humor is amusing, it made me laugh out loud at times too. The book doesn't have any emotions, but it does give you a feeling of... insouciance. After reading there's nothing of it left in my head, except for few incidences and jokes. An “enjoy as you read” book.
DNF. 2019, the year of terrible books, continues. I really wanted to like it and for a while I thought I might but then I realised I just didn't think it was funny.
After all these years I finally got around to this book. We took it along as an audiobook on our last long trip. It was just as wonderful as I've always heard. Seinfeld, folks. Seinfeld a hundred years ago. Clever. Smart. Funny.
The story is simple: three friends head out on a boat trip down the Thames. All three are a bit lazy and negligent and self-centered. It's all in good fun. A great read. Mustn't miss it.
A delight!
A good friend recommended Connie Willis' “To Say Nothing of the Dog” some years ago, which is a time-travelling homage to Jerome K. Jerome's hilarious classic “Three Men in a Boat.” Yet, I did not get around to reading TMIAB until my Great Books book club read it for our January 2017 meeting.
In an unusual turn of events, every member who attended loved the book (in 9 years, I can't remember this happening). Comparisons to “Seinfeld” abounded; TMIAB is a travelogue about nothing interrupted regularly by a series of humorous digressions.
There's no question in my mind that Monty Python were influenced by this book. In fact, the 1975 Tom Stoppard screen adaptation stars Michael Palin (to say nothing of Tim Curry) and does a magnificent job of capturing three members of the emerging clerk class on a river holiday with the trusty scallawag, Montmorency.
It is unfortunate that the average American is unfamiliar with this book. The language is relatively modern considering that it was written in the 1870's; many contemporaries considered the book gauche and low-class. This really ought to be required reading.
Brilliant, just brilliant! I recently learned that 5 stars means “it was amazing” on Goodreads. And with that newfound knowledge I'm giving this one 5 stars. It's hilarious through and through - laugh out loud kind of hilarious - struggling to stifle your chuckles on the bus kind of hilarious. I quite literally cried with laughter at points. I can barely believe it was written 130 years ago - it does not show its age at all.
It's cheeky, it's slapstick, it's insightful, it's witty, and it's just so beautifully British. Perfect. I loved it.
Update: Totally just re-read this book within six months. Well, I just enjoyed it so damn much. It was as much fun the second time round, if not more!
Update after third reading: This has become an all-time favourite and I've determined to read it once a year - at least! I still find it so funny that my giggles while reading it have annoyed the people around me.
4 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews
Three men and a dog take a boat vacation on England's waterways, with amusing results.
I've always confused Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat with the nursery rhyme “rub a dub dub, three men in a tub”. Knowing little of either, it took me years to realize they were different things. I thought I should make the effort to actually read the novel, once I realized there was one.
The book is much funnier than I anticipated, though it has its weak spots as well. The main conceit is a conceited, unreliable narrator. He and his fellows frequently err, though the errors are described in a dry tone that pretends to be reporting success (at least on the part of the narrator). It's very well done, and the result is not only witty but occasionally laugh out loud funny.
Occasionally, Jerome allows himself to be distracted by detailing the cities and sites they pass through, rendering the book less novel than travelogue. Wikipedia tells me it actually went the other way - originally intended to be a travel guide - in which case its success as comedy is even more surprising (though it suggests that the sappy, serious sections, were not intended to be overwritten). Even allowing for the travel guide, there's a long middle section on a historic battle that the book would have been better without. The book never really goes anywhere - the three men (and the dog) take their two week trip, and then they go home - but the trip is a fun one.
The book is dated in social attitudes (race, gender), but the great bulk of the humor holds up well. The version I read suffered from Open Road Media's often lackadaisical approach to proofreading.
Overall, a fun and funny book, worth reading.
We all have that one friend who narrates stories, real or made up, so well that he/she has you in splits just by virtue of being articulate. Jerome K Jerome is that friend.
Сложно говорить об этой книге. Она классная, милая, добрая, местами смешная, местами остроумная... Трое интеллигентных молодых английских джентльменов решают разнообразить свои будни путешествием на лодке. По ходу действия они рассуждают о самых разных вещах, умно и тонко шутят друг над другом и всячески развлекаются.
Книга очень милая, и оттого кажется наивной, хотя наив этот не так прост. К сожалению, сюжет не захватывает, поэтому эта книга скорее для беззаботных дачных выходных, или - да, для речного круиза.
В целом здорово и легко читается.
Fun! I developed quite a fondness for the narrator. Reminiscent of Mark Twain but with less bite. But I have to admit that I read this pretty lazily – I thought Montmorency was one of the three men in the boat until about halfway through the book when I finally did the math and found that by my count there were four men in the boat, not three. At first I thought it was a joke, but then I considered the book‰ЫЄs subtitle (‰ЫПTo say nothing of the dog‰Ыќ) and realized that Montmorency was, in fact, the dog. In my defense, on our first introduction to Montmorency there is dialogue attributed to him, and I started out reading the non-illustrated Penguin edition and only later switched to an illustrated ebook which had pictures of the dog. Also, the actual story of their trip down the river was not nearly as interesting as the sidebar stories and anecdotes and hypothetical situations, which were the best parts and had little or nothing to do with the dog.
—
‰ЫПThrow the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.‰Ыќ
