Initially I was not interested in reading this book but I was forced to because this novel was a part of syllabus for 9th grade. Turned out I was wrong about the book. It is a humorous travelogue of 3 friends and a dog along the river Thames. I couldn't help but laugh after reading every paragraph . I had to re-read it twice mostly for studying. Also the critical analysis of every chapter kinda killed the fun part hence I am giving 4 stars. This book is recommended for a boring road trip or simply a lazy weekend

9 de 10*

Antes de falar sobre a história (fantástica) deste livro, gostaria de partilhar o quanto me fez viajar ao passado. Dei por mim, de repente, a perceber que “Três Homens num Barco” era o mesmo livro que “Três Homens num Bote”, um livro que li e reli na minha adolescência e do qual guardo memórias muito boas! Tinha uma ideia muito geral da história, porque já se passaram muitos anos e muitos livros lidos depois, mas foi um relembrar de episódios que me soube tão bem!
Divagações à parte e finda a leitura, a palavra que me ocorre para a descrever é “deliciosa”! Tudo é delicioso neste livro, a história, os personagens (qual dos três homens é mais peculiar? Não esquecendo o cão, claro!), as peripécias, tudo!

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Summary (from Wikipedia)

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Review
I laughed out loud at some of the antics of these three. Picture this: Three men who have forgotten to pack a can-opener trying to break into a tin of pineapple. Once they have beaten it into every shape known to man (and a few more besides) with a rock and an oar, one of them, bruised and bleeding by now, imagines he sees the leering face of the Devil himself in the twisted lump of metal and flings it far out into the river.
The book frequently veers off the main topic to areas that did not seem relevant to the trip. That was a distraction for me, but maybe not for someone else. At 102 pages, it is a quick read and entertaining.

3.5 stars but recorded on GR as 3.

حسيتها خلصت فجأة :D

رواية مجنونة ... فكاهية ... ولنتفق على أنها عبارة عن محض ثرثرة :) وأنا أحب الكتب من تلك النوعية إن داخلتها الفكاهة ^_^ أحب أحاديث الثرثرة المغرقة في المبالغة ... أحببت ثرثرة هولدن مثلا في الحارس في حقل الشوفان، ومن بعدها ثرثرة بوتشان الياباني، وجان جاك روسو في مذكراته :) وأخيرا جيروم هنا في ثلاثة رجال في قارب

أضحكني كثيرا :) مواقف عجيبة في إطار رحلة أكثر عجبا وسيل من الذكريات التي لابد وأن تنتزع بعض الضحكات :D

تم ترشيح هذه الرواية لي في العام الماضي لكي اتخلص من كآبة رواية قرأتها ولكنني لم أكن أستطيع قرائتها اليكترونية حتى وإن جذبتني المقدمة حينها، لذا سعدت كثيرا حينما افتتحت بها رحلتي إلى معرض الكتاب هذا العام ... أول كتاب اشتريته بـ ١ جنيه فقط من سور الأزبكية :)

وأول قراءاتي ضمن رف معرض الكتاب ٢٠١٦ :)

ظريف جدا وكنت احتاج لشيء كهذا في الحقيقة حاليا ولقد حاولت أن أشتري كتبا مسلية بعيدة عن التعقيدات والكآبة من المعرض هذا العام، لذا فالغالب على كتبي الجديدة الخفة والفكاهة فأنا أقرأ للإستمتاع أولا وثانيا وثالثا ربما، علما بأن عامي السابق كان معقدا بما يكفي وإني لآمل تغير الأحوال للأفضل وإلى أن يحدث هذا فلنا في الخيال حياة فلتكن بسيطة وطريفة قدر الإمكان :)

It looked like a breezy read, a good-natured gently comical novel. Certainly it is not at all hard to read but nevertheless, this book was a grind for me to get through. Humorous novels suffer a great disadvantage in that I tend to expect to find something to laugh at on each every page. This is quite a tall order and very hard for most books to accomplish. P.G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett often make me laugh with their fiction but generally I try to avoid comedy novels. I prefer humour to be a facet of the novel rather than the focus. Novels which are based on plots, thrills and characterization, including serious novels often make me laugh when the author slip in humorous scenes or dialogue at unexpected moments. This help to balance the overall tone of the book for me. Dickens is often funny somewhere in his long novels, even Victor Hugo's Les Mis has funny bits.

With Three Men in a Boat I am surprised to find that the humour totally fell flat for me. I find the humour in this book is very tame, very polite and centered on the silliness of the protagonists, particularly the narrator. The style of narration is also rather whimsical, going off on tangents with little supposedly comical vignettes every few paragraphs. Unfortunately, I did not find any of it funny. The characters are indeed suitably silly but there is no depth to them, they are all self-absorbed and I could not work up any interest in their antics. Tomfooleries like getting up late, waiting for a defiant kettle to boil, drinking horrible tea and whatnot leave me cold.

The entire enterprise seems completely pointless from beginning to end, and not a single chuckle escaped me. OK, it is a beloved classic which has been in print for more than a century so I have to respect it for that. If you find it funny I respect that too, but humour is very subjective and I subjected myself to this. Ah well, what you gonna do?

We had what we thought was a delightful tenant once. She was older, she drove a minivan, and she recycled. She liked organic things and wanted us to call her Nana. And we did, because we thought it was sweet and a nice thing to do for a tenant who was paying over a few hundred dollars to live in our guest house.

But Nana had no sense of humor. None. At. All. And we didn't know this because it didn't show up on her criminal background check or on her credit score range information. We didn't know it until sweet Nana told us that she wouldn't allow any pest control to spray the guest house, that she would take care of it with orange oil and other friendly ways to get rid of insects, like saying "shoo!" and "Get along now, little creature." And we let Nana do this. We smiled at it. And the day that she came to me looking suspicious with a can of insect spray and told me that she had sprayed because she had seen a black widow somewhere and that she just had to pull out the big guns because she was old and had been bitten once before I just smiled and waggled my finger towards her and winked, saying "You heathen, you!"

But Nana didn't like that. She had no humor. She thought I was really calling her a heathen, a pagan, a cannibal that ran around spraying chemicals at all God's creatures willy nilly, devil may care. And so Nana had to go.

Jerome K. Jerome could write loads about Nana. And, if he wasn't dead, I would have read them. But, as it is, I read his three men in a boat and had almost as much fun. But this book is not for the Nanas of the world. This book is for anyone who likes humor. Really, anyone can like it. You can even eat organic and read it. It's delightful, and not hard on the eyes. If you have to leave Jerome for a bit, you can still come back and read and laugh some more; he's really forgiving. Being British and boating up the Thames isn't even what I would normally consider laughter inducing, but I think Jerome K. Jerome can pull it off because he had lots of practice working with humor (I imagine many a schoolboy teased him about his name and perhaps that explains his mastery).

I originally read this because I'm a big fan of Connie Willis and she went on and on about it, but when I actually read it, I was charmed for its own sake. :)

It's all so very droll.

Fish stories, laziness, incompetence, dishonesty, pathos and great verve stud these pages. It's an adventure for the ages! Of course, it's just three men in a boat, to say nothing of the dog.

Set in Victorian England, it captures the overblown hypochondriac feel of the age. :)

Well worth the read, and now I think I'm gonna hunt down takers for a first or re-read of Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which, I might add, might be a bit superior in every way. :)

Cuando empecé la lectura de esta novela me encontraba viendo, todavía lo estoy, la serie completa de The office en su versión estadounidense, una de las mejores series cómicas de la historia mundial. Bien, pues poco hay en esa ficción que no estuviera ya en la obra de Jerome... si exceptuamos a la encantadora, bella y delicada Pam.

Salvando ese pequeño aunque no despreciable detalle, esta novela posee una característica que, por inusual, debe ser resaltada y ponderada como se merece. Me refiero, claro está, a que «Tres hombres en una barca» es de esos infrecuentes relatos que, llevando a cuestas durante años la fama de ser muy divertido, resulta ser, en efecto, muy divertido. Pensarán que exagero, que esto es de todo punto insólito, y es cierto, pero no les puedo decir otra cosa sin faltar a la verdad.

Stella Gibbons apunta en el prólogo a la edición de Blackie Books que he tenido el gran placer de leer que uno de los motivos de tan extraño suceso se debe a la satisfacción que lectores de todo el mundo han experimentado durante años al ser testigos del sufrimiento de estos tres personajes, una observación tan perspicaz como muchas de las que encontrarán en la novela, y a la que yo añado otros dos puntos igual de relevantes, a saber, lo hilarante que es observar al prójimo envuelto en situaciones ridículas de las que el prójimo ni siquiera es consciente y la maravillosa sensación que a uno le recorre el cuerpo al corroborar, algo nada sorprendente por otro lado, la siempre infravalorada estupidez ajena.

Todo muy de agradecer pues, al comparar, uno se siente menos mal con la forma en la que la vida le va tratando, a pesar de todo, y lo inteligentes que hemos tenido la suerte de nacer, hechos siempre muy agradables de constatar, y que no se ven empañados por el también imperativo reconocimiento de que hasta sujetos de la catadura de los tres barqueros puedan darnos más de una lección de sentido común y callarnos la boca.

n   “…los que han hecho la prueba dicen que una conciencia tranquila proporciona felicidad y alegría, pero un estómago lleno consigue los mismos resultados con más facilidad y por menos dinero.” n

Lo que, sin menospreciar los placeres que proporciona un suculento banquete, también es aplicable al hecho de leer novelas como esta.

n  "¡Tira el lastre por la borda, compañero! Que la barca de tu vida sea ligera, equipada solo con lo necesario: un hogar sencillo, placeres simples, uno o dos amigos que merezcan tal nombre, alguien a quien amar y alguien que te ame, un perro, un gato, una o dos pipas, lo justo para alimentarte, lo justo para vestirte y un poco más de lo justo para beber, pues la sed es peligrosa." n

Amén.

This began as a tourist guide. Written in 1889, Jerome K. Jerome’s intention was to write a guide describing flora, fauna, the natural beauty and spots of historical interest along the River Thames. To this he added comic anecdotes depicting his own outings on the river with his two friends George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel. It was the humor that caught Edwardian readers’ attention. The book became a classic not for its touristic content but rather its humor.

We are given the tale of J., George, Harris (this must be Hentschel) and the dog Montmorency (a rambunctious fox terrier) taking a two-week jaunt in a double sculling skiff up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford, alternately passing through locks, floating with sails hoisted upside-down or sideways or drawn by means of tow-lines that incessantly tangled, nights under the stars or residing in riverside inns when the heavens poured down if a bed or empty pool table were to be found. Three Victorian gentleman and their dog roughing-it, assuaging their hunger with bread and jam, an omelet or say an Irish stew comprised of whatever vittles were to be found, with Montmorency’s rat and other leftovers thrown in. A journey of mishaps and fun.

The historical tidbits are not to be discounted. Reading of one funny incident after another begins to wear thin Learning about sites and events that have occurred along the river in times past add a needed counterweight. They offer a good diversion from the laughs. Some examples are the hedge maze at Hampton Court, King John’s signing in 1215 of the Magna Carta on the so named island on the reach above Bell Weir Lock, Bisham Church in the Royal Borough of Windsor with its tombs and monuments, Shelley’s stay and writing in Marlow, the 12th century Cistercian Medmenham Abbey and more. The tourist information makes a reader wish to repeat their trip today.

The book is not read for its character portrayal. Instead, it is the anecdotes, the funny lines and the historical facts that draw.

If you choose the audiobook narrated by Martin Jarvis, do not forget to read the accompanying PDF file. It contains fascinating biographical information about the author. At fifteen he became an orphan and had to fend for himself. He worked as a clerk at the London and North Western Railway Company. An acting career attracted him for a time and as a playwright he had some success. Then he became a penny-a-line journalist. With publication of Three Men in a Boat his career as a writer was confirmed. It was an immediate success worldwide. He became co-founder of the periodical The Idler and pursued writing until his death in 1927 at the age of 68.

I really enjoyed the narration by Jarvis. He has worked with both film and television and is well known for his voice-acting for radio and audiobook recordings. He captures the jaunty feel of the expedition marvelously. The recording is easy to follow. There is music played between the different chapters. This I could have done without; it disrupts the flow of the book.

4.5 ⭐

„Трима души в една лодка“ е много приятна и забавна книга! Тя представлява очарователен пътепис, в който красивите природни описания са преплетени със страхотно британско чувство за хумор... Допадна ми това пътешествие по река Темза във Викторианската епоха - определено бих прочел и други творби на Джером!




„Според мен Марлоу е едно от най-приятните крайречни градчета. То е шумно и оживено и признавам, не много живописно, но в него има запазени не едно и две старовремски кътчета - оцелели арки от рухналия мост на времето, по които въображението ни намира път назад към дните, когато Марлоу е бил владение на Алгар Саксонски, преди Вилхелм Завоевателя да го превземе, за да го дари на кралица Матилда и преди то да премине ръцете на графовете Уорик или на мъдрия лорд Паджет, съветник на четирима поредни монарси.
Ако имате желание да се поразходите след усилното гребане, ще откриете, че околностите, а и самата река са най-красиви точно тук. Цялата отсечка надолу до Кукъм, покрай ширналите се ливади и Куорийската гора е истински пир за окото. Милата стара Куорийска гора! Заслуша ли се човек по-внимателно, може да долови ехото на шумни и щастливи летни дни, кънтящо и до днес по тесните и стръмни пътеки и закътани малки полянки! А взре ли се в тъмните подмоли, може би ще мерне някое видение със засмяно лице, бродещо из сенчестите просeки. A заедно с шепота на листата до вас като че ли долитат отдавна забравени гласове.“

Three young gentlemen and I use that word very loosely are desperate to get away from the fast pace tensions of every day 19th Century London life ( the horror !). And go someplace else, they should have stayed put indeed. The men need a long rest, they're quite run down but from what though ? The boys don't actually work much, these hypochondriacs I mean sick men just want to have a little fun. J.(Jerome) thinks he has every illness in the book and he's read it too, except housemaid's knee. That J. doesn't have, worries him immensely so leave the city or the end is near thinks the almost wise man. The other members of this desperate, oddball trio are J.'s friends George and Harris , don't forget Montmorency . The liveliest of the group he has four legs, is terribly short with a small tail, angers easily is always ready for a fight. Guarding everyone, this brave young man ( not technically) he's really a fox-terrier. After a considerable discussion a leisurely boat trip (of two weeks) up the Thames River sounds delightful, only smart Montmorency objects. But is outvoted 3 to 1, being a team player the irritated dog sorry Montmorency decides to join the others. They will row and tow and go, nothing can be a better vacation? Packing and unpacking causes a little difficulty J, is the best at this kind of exercise. And proud of his talents does the honors. While Harris and George lazily look on, comfortably sitting on their big posteriors supervising, both sleepily say. They are hard working men no doubt ...The two proclaim numerous times ... Poor J, someone is invariably losing an article so he opens the bag and searches again and again, the humongous thing. I'm afraid the boys got carries away, and putting just a little too much in ... At last the trio...the four, are on the river. Slowly rowing up, their boat struggling against the dangerous current, as disaster looms everywhere yet now a miracle happens muscles soon develop, they become strong, hardy, brave gentlemen getting fresh air and healthy again ... Two row one steers, ( Montmorency must be the captain) guess which job the boys like the most. Harris has a slight accident, a tumble in the vessel legs up in the air, still being such a great sailor stays on board. The picturesque view of the ever changing stream is worth all the trouble ... Small lovely villages, that seem quaint from another era however, I wouldn't drink the water there. Looking ... on the calm brownish river the red sunset, the yellow light shining on the waters, the purple sky above as the dark night closes in and bright stars appearing ... Roughing it on shore, sleeping in their boat, with a cozy cover over them just as good as a bed, camping out how grand ... And exceptional entertainment too, a friend's Banjo playing ... doing his best. The singing by all, rather splendid...almost, taking a freezing dip in the inviting river before breakfast, trying to open a can of delicious pineapples unsuccessfully... and seeing how far you could throw it across the Thames ( WHAT SPORT). On the river in the boat as the cold rains come pouring down, drenched together, dodging the big steamers and receiving many curses , almost killed yes the fun of it. Luckily Montmorency is there too ... A gentle charming, satire on the English way of life that is no more...very entertaining for people who enjoy people and all their peculiarities.

Το συγκεκριμένο μυθιστόρημα αποτελεί ένα από τα χαρακτηριστικότερα και πιο κλασικά δείγματα της Βρετανικής κουλτούρας και του φλεγματικού χιούμορ της Βικτωριανής εποχής (1889). Ο Τζερόουμ, έξυπνα, χρησιμοποιεί την εκδρομή τριών φίλων με βάρκα στον Τάμεση με τη συντροφιά του απολαυστικού σκύλου τους, Μονμόρενσυ για να σατυρίσει και να καυτηριάσει 'σκοτεινές' στιγμές της Βρετανικής Ιστορίας, αλλά καί ήθη και καταστάσεις της εποχής, όπως την αλαζονική αντίδραση στην ανάπτυξη της τεχνολογίας, τον εγκλωβισμό από τη ζωή στις μεγαλουπόλεις, τον υποχονδριασμό, τον ατομικισμό, τον σνομπισμό, την υποκρισία κτλ.

Το 2ο μέρος του βιβλίου έχει πιο γρήγορη ροή, ενώ, στο σύνολό του, το μυθιστόρημα περιέχει και πολλά στοιχεία χιουμοριστικού διηγήματος καταστάσεων. Μοναδικό και πρωτότυπο - διαθέτει την ίδια 'φρεσκάδα', μετά από.... 129 χρόνια.

Βαθμολογία: 4,2/5 ή 8,4/10.