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

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).

Što - da - ne trojka, propraćena osmehom simpatije.
Može da se priča i zašto da i zašto ne, ali bi to bila rasprava na temu šta je za koga smešno.

It's a book of comical anecdotes strung together to compile the history of a 2 week vacation of 3 men who rent a boat and go rowing on the Thames. Oh, and their dog, Montmorency, goes along. It is one comic episode after another and so ridiculous that it could be titled 3 stooges in a boat and I wouldn't bat an eye. I did enjoy it and it was quite successful in it's day. I give it 3.5 stars, the extra half goes to the dog.

Written in 1899, this book could easily be contemporary, just change the scenery a bit and give these guys another mode of transportation. The three men in question, J, George and Harris, along with Montmorency the dog, decide to take a camping trip down the Thames (and when I include the dog in the decision making, it is not a stretch). The dynamics between the men is just what I would expect today of three young men on a camping excursion, particularly three men who are not overly adept at living an outdoor life. The humor is subtle and sometimes hilarious, and while there is little in the way of a plot, the book is sheer fun.

I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk around with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

Seriously, I know this man! I might be related to him. Hell, I might be married to him.

The book is replete with this kind of sarcasm and anecdotes that show how little human nature has changed in 120 years. There is a maze experience that had me rolling, a struggle with a tin can of pineapple, and a fish tale that keeps growing. The boys fix a stew to which ”Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner…”

I’m not always good with comedy, but that got a laugh, even as my skin crawled thinking of the dead rat being put into the stew pot. Takes a certain kind of humor to really capture me. This did. Once again, I think I might have been born too late. I suspect I would have been at home in a previous century.

It takes three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.

Maybe I would have been the giggler.

Eh... Quando si dice: "troppo British o troppo americano"...
L'idea della traversata in barca lungo il Tamigi contemplando il paesaggio e le campagne londinesi: buona.
L'idea della vita in barca, le confidenze la coabitazione dei tre e il cane Montmorency: buona.
L'idea delle gag e dei ricordi di vita quotidiana secondo lo humor inglese: a gusto personale ma buona.
Eppure per me non ha funzionato: sarà perché noi popolo italico siamo avvezzi al superamento artistico degli inconvenienti della vita quotidiana ma quell'ananas in scatola senza apriscatole non mi ha sorpreso.
Insomma mi sono proprio un tantino annoiata, togliamoci pure un tantino.

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.

Three Men in a Boat is one of those books which have become legend. It is quoted as a must-read for all humour afficionados: it is touted as one of the funniest books in the English language. So I am a little bit ashamed that I waited so long to read it!

Then, you may ask, why only the three stars?

Well...

The pluses first. The book is really humorous: in many places, I could not control my sniggers and was doubled up in front of the computer screen (this was just before dinner yesterday, BTW, so my wife thought I was in agony from hunger and ran off to the kitchen to heat the food). British humour is dependent on exaggeration and understatement. They exaggerate the humdrum (the smell of cheese in the railway compartment, for example, from the tome under discussion) and understate the momentous; and the disparity of scale produces the humour. But the prose is always dead serious, the writer never for a moment advertising the fact that he is writing something funny. It gets me every time, even on the re-reads (sometime, in the case of P.G.Wodehouse, even on the re-re-re-...reads).

Jerome K. Jerome is a fine writer. As with all good writers of humour, language is putty in his hands. I can detect many of Wodehouse's classic turns of phrase in Jerome's work, so Wodehouse must have drawn inspiration from him.

The minuses? Well, pretty much everything else.

Apart from the humour, the book has little else to recommend it. The journey is rambling and uninteresting: the discussion of the English villages do not stay in the mind: the historical vignettes, even though well-realised, seems to be too "text-book"y and out of place: and one particular passage, about the corpse of the lovely girl floating in the river, is outright bad and could be straight out of a pulp novel. These dragged this book down from five stars to three stars for me.

But I will still go back and read certain passages like Uncle Podger putting up the picture, Harris singing comic songs, the travails of the poor German singer, and George getting up early in the morning by mistake. These are vintage British humour.

Recommended for all those who love to laugh.

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.

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.

Thoroughly entertaining - I have not giggled at a book so much since reading the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. Amazing that the wit and the slapstick are as vivid for a book published in 1889. Fun, fun, fun. Makes me wish that there were more books about in the same vein this century.

It's hard for me to put into words how much I love this book. I've used it as a talisman for a good year since my early twenties. 

Each year has to begin with Jerome on his boat. 

The book tells the tale of three friends who spend their summer rowing up the Thames, a past time they all love and do all the time. 

However, life on the water is never as simple as we're led to believe. Jerome tells us in great detail of every misadventure he'd had with his merry band of brothers (and his scrappy little terrier) which include misbehaving equipment, disappearing lockgates, bad weather, strange boat people, steam launches, and the beautiful towns along the ancient River.

I always feel that the basic premise of this book is having Jerome hold out his hand, and say, "Come...walk the world with me". You're never quite the same when you come back to your own life on dry land.

If I could give this book a million stars, it still wouldn't be enough.