One of the best novels of all time.

Gulliver's Travels is purported to be a classic and a children's tale. I read this to find out about both and to remove the Disney version from my head. Gulliver travels to Lilliput (The small), Brobdingnag (giants), Laputa (thinkers) and Houyhnhnm (horses). The small and large are contrasted to show that might makes the rules. The thinkers are characterized an nonsensical, useless, layabout tyrants and the horse society with its attendant Yahoos (feral humans) as the ideal. The ideal which has no crime, want disease or love seems kind of boring.

The writing is arachaic, profane, funny and tedious.

A Modest Proposal in the darkest humor advocates the eating of Irish children by English lords and ladies. It would relieve the overpopulation of Ireland and play to the strength of the Irish - procreation. Swift acknowledges the slight initial distaste of eating children, but he suggests several methods of preparation and repitition to overcome the qualms of the sqeamish.

A Modest Proposal is the better work. Vicious, dark humor comes along but a few times.

Excellent book

He big, no he small

This book seemed to be nothing more than the drunken rantings of an Irish man. It was a good book, but it was very strange and weird. "A Modest Proposal" was by far the funniest thing I have ever read though. It is dripping with satire and just absolutely hilarious. Anyone who takes it seriously is seriously an idiot, because there's no way it could even be considered as a real proposal.

I am re-reading this classic book because it is hard to get free e-books for my iPad from the library. I use a few classics in between when I have problems getting newer books to read.

I am understanding the satire much more as an adult than I did as a young adult reading required reading.

Re-read Travels out loud to boys - definitely another book to read out loud.

This wasn't the edition I read as a teenager, but it has my two favorite Swift pieces. The original Gulliver's Travels is nothing like the animated feature film or the later movie versions. I remember it as being quite 'naughty' when I first read it. "A Modest Proposal" is hilarious. For amture teens (as I was) and adults, an enjoyable adventure story and perhaps, in another dimension or some dystopian society, a solution to hunger. Don't know what i am talking about. Beat it to your local library or used boko store. Look for the Great Books of the Western World series (that's the one I read).

I'm not a friend of satires. Meh. I thought that I had read it before. Most of the book I thought I hadn't, but the last section was familiar. It's a classic and I can see why, but I wasn't into it.

A Modest Proposal was hilarious, if you can keep in mind that it's a satire.

Swift is one of history’s premier satirists, and his works transcend time and place. My favorite of these two works is the 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal” in which the author purports to solve the problem of poverty and hunger in Ireland by eating young children (“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled…”). It takes a consummate writer to make cannibalism funny, and Swift succeeds admirably.

This book is SO much more than Lilliput. I'm glad I read the entire book, rather than relying on Disney's version.