If you're looking for a book with a plot, this is not for you. But if you'd like to take a leisurely trip down the Thames in good company, I can't imagine a better book. Jerome K. Jerome, is even funnier than his name. I kept catching myself smiling as I read his account of his trip down the river with his two equally lazy buddies and his dog Montmorency. The book was actually less about the trip itself than a collection of daydreams and random stories pulled together in much the same manner as a really great dinner conversation with good friends. He spends a lot of the book light-heartedly poking fun at his own laziness and hypochondria. For example:
"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 is my energetic nature. I can't help it."

He also frequently jokes around about his writing:
“Just when we had given up all hope -- yes, I know that is always the time that things do happen in novels and tales; but I can’t help it. I resolved, when I began to write this book, that I would be strictly truthful in a ll things; and so I will be, even if I have to employ hackneyed phrases for the purpose.”

His writing is actually a lot like a river itself. It meanders all over the place, yet flows along very pleasantly. I'd call it stream-of-consciousness (no pun intended) but its not as pretentious and unpunctuated as that style usually is.

TW//  suicide

I don’t like most classics and this one was no exception. Three Men in a Boat is a book that is advertised as being very humorous and funny, but any quirky humor in this book is drowned out by the old English that it is written in. I struggle to understand old English and this one was worst than most as I could barely understand anything that was happening. What I could understand though was that the main character kept going on side tangents that distracted from the actual plot of the story and led to even more confusion for me. If old English isn’t your thing, then skip this one because it’s definitely not worth the effort to read this one. If you do decide to read it though, I highly recommend using a guide to help you understand the book better.

Something that I need to discuss that happened toward the end of the book so I'm sorry for the spoiler tag:
It’s sort of really weird to me that they found a lady who had killed herself and discovered her unfortunate life that led to her decision to end her life. This book is supposed to be a humorous book so this scene felt out of place. I’m glad it wasn’t painted as a funny scene as suicide is a serious topic, but I wonder why the author felt the need to include this scene in the book.

One of my ever favourite novels! Unalloyed pleasure to sink into truly English sense of humour! And Montmorency became my idea of a dog!

Jerome initially planned this account of a fictional fortnight's boat trip up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford to be an actual travel guide and remnants of his intent appear sporadically and incongruously. Fortunately, his gift for humor quickly took over the serialized episodes that were published as a book in 1889, which has remained in print ever since. The droll adventures and anecdotes of the narrator J and his friends George and Harris, accompanied by the dog Montmorency, put me in mind of P. G. Wodehouse, who admired Jerome, and if you like the one, you'll like the other. Effectively describing humor is an even more arcane art than humor itself, so I'm not going to try, but I do recommend you give this a try; you'll know quickly whether it's for you.

This post is part of the 2016 Classics Challenge.

“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."

Suffering from every malady in the book except housemaid's knee, three men and a dog decide to head for a restful vacation on the Thames. Anticipating peace and leisure, they encounter, in fact, the joys of roughing it, of getting their boat stuck in locks, of being towed by amateurs, of having to eat their own cooking and, of course, of coping with the glorious English weather.

WHEN I Discovered This Classic
I can't quite remember but it might have been when I first got my Kindle back in 2011. I downloaded a whole bunch of out-of-copyright classics for free and this was one of them. But it wasn't until I started the classics challenges that I actually decided to read it.

“We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.” 

WHY I Chose to Read It
I wanted a short, light read and this seemed like the perfect classic! I came across the audiobook on Spotify, and started listening to it on the way to work.

WHAT Makes It A Classic
It's one of the oldest books I've read –  127 years old! (That's 100 years older than myself).

"I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.” 

WHAT I Thought of This Classic
Three Men in a Boat was a thoroughly enjoyable classic – and I don't say this lightly. It helped that I was listening to the audiobook narrated by Hugh Laurie, who was perfect for the story. It's told with typical British humour that I forget how much I enjoy until I hear it – witty, hyperbolic one-liners told in a serious tone. I rarely laugh at any book, but this one had me trying not to giggle on the way to work.

Three Men in a Boat is exactly what it says on the tin (or should I say, cover). George, Harris, narrator Jerome, and a fox terrier called Montmorency (a fantastic name!) take a two-week boating holiday from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back again. Even though much of the story is about the everyday experiences of the river journey – from washing one's clothes to making a pot of tea – it's made much more enjoyable by Jerome K. Jerome's expert understanding of the things that tie us all together; it's like a 100-year-old version of Very British Problems.

WILL It Stay A Classic
Yes – even though it's over 100 years old, it still feels funny and fresh. I could quite believe that it was only published this year.

WHO I’d Recommend It To
People who enjoy British humour. People who want to read older classics. People who want to give classics audiobooks a try.

“But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.”

I also reviewed this book over on Pretty Books.

This is a no- spoiler review. Guys, this is the FUNNIEST book I've ever read. I read this one first in 9th grade as it was part of my school syllabus and I was reading this for an exam in the last minute at night. Guess what? The happiest night it was. I was laying on bed with this book and I could just laugh and laugh as the chapter progressed. That feeling ... Damn! Pure joy. Do give this one a try. Loved this. Language difficulty level is intermediate.

This is one of those books that I'd heard about forever but never got around to reading. I believe I first read about it in a Robert A. Heinlein book (Have Space Suit- Will Travel, one of the first novels I ever read), and then from Connie Willis, who referred to it a lot in To Say Nothing of the Dog (which is the subtitle of this original) in 1997. Finally, going on six decades later, I have listened to this fine audio presentation. It's a very funny book, filled with wry British wit, irony, and humor, the literary ancestor of Douglas Adams and Monty Python. It's from the 19th century, so there's a lot of humor and attitude that's no longer socially acceptable, but much of it is quite uproarious. Much of it is told in the manner of asides, hilarious observations of commonplace occurrences and events like a patriarch directing the hanging of a picture, and the adventures of three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) attempting to wash their clothes, pitch a tent, and divide up chores. I should have taken the advice of Ms. Willis (who really is the sharpest knife in the drawer and the brightest bulb in the string) and read it sooner.

I started reading Three Man in a Boat some years ago (25?), found that I couldn't get into it, set it aside, and eventually gave it to a library sale. I decided to give it another try recently, but in abridged audio book form. Hugh Laurie is the reader and, from seeing him play Bertie Wooster, I knew he could do humor very well. He brought the humor of the book across and I got more than a few chuckles as I listened. However, for me, the humor of the book is somewhat marginal - the difference between the chuckles I experienced and full fledged laughter.
The three stars are strictly for Mr. Laurie's reading. I won't be reading the book.

Smashing good fun old boy!

In this comic story about three friends on a boating trip up the Thames, Jerome K. Jerome—the narrator and one of the three men in question—weaves in countless anecdotes about his boatmates George and Harris and their various acquaintances, not to mention some very funny details about their misadventures along the way. Apparently, the author had originally intended this book to be a serious and stoic travel guide, and while there are some descriptions of the sites and local history along the way, even these passages are usually told with a good dose of irony, and in some places with quite lovely lyrical prose, actually.

My only complaint is I kept wondering why there was not more mention of the dog, and which of his two friends he kept referring to as 'Montmorency', and I should honestly have caught on earlier on when Montmorency went and fetched after something... anyway had to wait until the very end of the story before I realized they were of course one and the same. Silly me. Did I just give away a spoiler? I can't even be sure! Lol. Loved Steven Crossley's narration on my Tantor Audio edition, and I have since sought out more books read by him. This is a title I'll be revisiting often, which is easily done as it's short and is sure to make me chortle here and there, as I like this sort of British humour! :-)

Hilarious! I chuckled throughout! The author employed humor skillfully, often at his own expense. Such a funny tale of the author's 2 week trip with 2 of his college buddies and his dog up the river Thames, and the difficulties and fun they experience.

The publisher’s summary for this edition does the best job of describing the book that I’ve read yet. My one sentence version: Reflections on a boat trip up the Thames in 1889 by three young men, accompanied by a fox terrier, along with side observations on events such as the effect on an entire household of one man’s efforts to hang a picture.

When I first read this some 40 years ago I marveled at the extent to which Jerome’s descriptions of these small experiences in his life were not only wildly entertaining, but were not that different from my own. His thoughts on the persistent tendency of tow ropes to tangle themselves without human intervention echoed my own with regard to garden hoses, for instance.

This feeling is even more pronounced today: the way in which J, the main character, diagnoses himself with every disease he comes across (with the exception of housemaids’ knee) as he reads through a medical dictionary is pretty similar to my efforts at finding an explanation for any symptom I may be experiencing using Dr. Google.

In short, the book has retained its charm for me, as I think it will for most people who enjoy, say The Importance of Being Ernest or HMS Pinafore. If you’re not fond of that particular style of British humor, this will probably not be your cup of tea.

To be clear, the book is not cover to cover humor, English-style or otherwise. From time to time Jerome waxes on in purple prose about nature, or what it means to be an Englishman. There are two reasons this was not the problem for me that has been for others. For one thing, these passages (especially the commentary on the history associated with points along the river) were a nice break between the comic sections. More importantly, I think they are part of the overall picture the book paints of a 20-something Londoner with a comfortable existence in the 1880’s. This young man, chock full of amusing anecdotes, also harbors lyrical, sometimes maudlin, thoughts about himself and his country.

One last thing - the narration by Steven Crossley is a great match for the content.