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! :-)

I absolutely love the book “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome. It is so LOL funny but so full of truth. (Apparently his mother had a little humor in naming her son.)
Three friends decide to take a boat trip down the River Thames and begin their planning by listing all the things they must take with them. They quickly realize all their things are going to sink the boat and that the “useless” should be thrown overboard. Failure to do so would only bring anxiety and worry.

“Throw 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. You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine—time to listen to the Æolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-...” Chapter 3

The book becomes a metaphor for how we should live our lives.

Generally, I consider myself not to have a literary sense of humour. Indeed, I have generally avoided books labelled 'Humour' because I see them as silly. I just don't find them to be funny. No chuckle. No guffaw. No smile.

I also have to admit that I find most other sources of humour rather uninteresting also. Stand-up comedians leave me flat. Sit-coms are just not funny. I do have a sense of humour. It just doesn't seem to be aligned with this particular time and place.

Now Florencia assured me that this was funny, at least to her weird sense of humour. As I tend to trust Florencia, I felt that I should give the book a try. Set off with the Three Men (and a dog) in a Boat, so to speak. I hoped not to be disappointed as I didn't want to lose faith in Florencia.

Well, there's a thing about this book. Though published in 1889, the humour is timeless. It's that sort of humour that one encounters while sitting in a boat with a couple of friends. Or maybe around a campfire on a canoe trip. Or maybe just while sitting with friends on a rainy day and from out of nowhere, wry one liners start popping up. Subtle humour that passes easily between friends followed by stories of past times together where equally terse humour bring smiles and smirks and, yes Florencia, even laughter. This is the kind of humour that lasts a lifetime or, perhaps, more than a century.

So Three Men in a Boat is, as Florencia says, "funny". So do read her review. It's so much better than this one.

Uma leitura leve e muito divertida, ideal para terminar este ano de 2020.

While I was reading this 19th century novel about three men on a boat trip, I traced the course of their journey on a map. They started out from Kingston-on-Thames just outside London and rowed up the river all the way to Oxford, stopping at many places on the way. Each time a place name was mentioned, I plotted it on my map, and so, little by little, I began to see that section of the river Thames as a long piece of rope curling itself into many twists and turns as it stretches half-way across England. Here's what my rope river looks like:

n  n

I was fascinated by those twists and turns, and the many lakes and reservoirs that are as if nested in the twists, for all the world like a series of digressions or nested narratives in a larger story. I'm very fond of books with nested narratives. I probably should have a shelf named for such books, I've read so many of them. Books such as Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, The Sot-Weed Factor, Double or Nothing, in all of which the reader finds themselves propelled by various twists and turns through a series of side stories so that the main story can be completely lost from view—until around a bend it suddenly appears and the reader is back on track. I think Jerome K Jerome must have an equal fondness for such nested narratives. His narrator is given to digressions, his mind wandering off frequently as he thinks on the history of the places he and his two companions pass through, or other adventures he's had with the same companions, to say nothing of Montmorency, the dog he's taken along with him on the journey.

Sometimes, the narrator is so preoccupied with remembering some incident or other that he steers the boat right into the riverbank, and then he, his companions and the dog, to say nothing of the reader, are propelled back into the present moment of the narrative with a crash. Such crashes, upheavals, and entanglements happen so often that it's a wonder the characters ever reach Oxford and attempt the return journey back to Kingston-on-Thames, or at least back to a warm and inviting hostelry half-way there, one with a train station leading to London nearby, so that they can avoid any further rain-soaked nights sleeping under the tent they had rigged up on their rowboat. And, incidentally, the book is so full of good advice on how, for example, to put up a tent on a boat, how to boil water on a paraffin stove in the bow, and how to get ropes untangled, while still remaining good friends with your boat companions, that I thought it would make the perfect (if slightly tattered) gift for a couple I know who had requested a book instead of a congratulations card for their recent wedding—which is how I came to reread this book. As I reread it, I marked up all those practical tips for their attention. Here's another one from the early pages:
The first list we made had to be discarded. It was clear that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable; so we tore the list up, and looked at one another. George said: ‘You know we are on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.’
How about that for good advice! And the narrator also has an interesting take on living with in-laws:
Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult bit of the river I know. You want to be born on that bit of water, to understand it. I have been over it a fairish number of times, but I have never been able to get the hang of it. The man who could row a straight course from Oxford to Iffley ought to be able to live comfortably, under one roof, with his wife, his mother-in-law, his eldest sister, and the servant who was in the family when he was a baby. First the current drives you on to the right bank, and then on to the left, then it takes you out into the middle, turns you round three times, and carries you up-stream again, and always ends by trying to smash you up against a college barge.

And the book doubles as a guide to where not to stay if you ever find yourself time-traveling through that part of England:
Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village, old-fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich and beautiful. If you stay the night on land at Clifton, you cannot do better than put up at the ‘Barley Mow’. It is, without exception, I should say, the quaintest, most old-world inn up the river. It stands on the right of the bridge, quite away from the village. Its low-pitched gables and thatched roof and latticed windows give it quite a story-book appearance, while inside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied.
It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay at. The heroine of a modern novel is always ‘divinely tall’, and she is ever ‘drawing herself up to her full height’. At the ‘Barley Mow’ she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this. It would also be a bad house for a drunken man to put up at. There are too many surprises in the way of unexpected steps down into this room and up into that; and as for getting upstairs to his bedroom, or ever finding his bed when he got up, either operation would be an utter impossibility to him.

However there's also some advice I made sure to tell the couple to ignore:
The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is a very good place to drown yourself in. The undercurrent is terribly strong, and if you once get down into it you are all right. An obelisk marks the spot where two men have already been drowned, while bathing there; and the steps of the obelisk are generally used as a diving-board by young men now who wish to see if the place really is dangerous.

I really think it's the perfect guide for people starting out life together. I mean, you never can tell when you'll find yourself rowing upriver in a small boat in uncertain weather, meeting unforeseen obstacles, and enduring a never-ending series of frustrations of one kind or another. Well, maybe that's taking it too far. But at the very least, the book offers a few sublime reading moments. It seemed to me that the following passage had the rhythm of Longfellow's poetry so I've taken the liberty of breaking up the lines to emphasize the parallel:
The river
– sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets,
gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks,
glinting through the dark cool wood paths,
chasing shadows o’er the shallows,
flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels,
throwing kisses to the lilies,
wantoning with the weirs’ white waters,
silvering moss-grown walls and bridges,
brightening every tiny townlet,
making sweet each lane and meadow,
lying tangled in the rushes,
peeping laughing from each inlet,
gleaming gay on many a far sail,
making soft the air with glory
– is a golden fairy stream.

But the river
– chill and weary,
with the ceaseless raindrops falling
on its brown and sluggish waters,
with the sound as of a woman,
weeping low in some dark chamber,
while the woods all dark and silent,
shrouded in their mists of vapour,
stand like ghosts upon the margin;
silent ghosts with eyes reproachful,
like the ghosts of evil actions,
like the ghosts of friends neglected
– is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain regrets.

Ok, maybe that's too mournful a way to end the review so I'll include the follow-on bit about sunlight:
Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. It makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care for us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and her children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile from her.

Perhaps that won't do to finish on either. How about this:
…they must have had very fair notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers. Why, all our art treasures of today are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is any real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The ‘old blue’ that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimney-pieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?

Yes, that's a good note to finish on because here we are reading Jerome K Jerome’s rather old-fashioned words in the year '2000 and odd', a year he could only dream of back in 1889, and this tattered old paperback, that I might have thrown out in one of our house moves, may be about to start a new life as a 'prized treasure' on my friends' bookshelf.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome is a bestselling classic of all time. It is based on a boat trip taken by three men and a dog. The plot sets in England and the author used different tales of history to make the book more exciting.

One day George, Harris, and Jerome decide to go on a boat trip on the Thames with their dog, Montmorency. They needed a break from their busy life. In their two weeks voyage, they met new people, face the worst weather, and feels nostalgic often. Whenever something happens in the present, they think about something specific anecdotes from the past that made the story wittier.

The New Uncle Podger and the Cheese Story are most noticeable; also the incident of Montmorency with cat made me chuckle. At some points, I don't feel the vibe of the book. The version I read has some spelling mistakes. Overall, it is a fast-paced novel where the experiences they had are worth reading. The language is simple, and the end will leave the readers with thoughts where simple things will also make sense after a long detachment.

Read more here - https://www.bookscharming.com/2019/10...

Three Men in a Boat is a completely and absolutely delightful waste of time. I must have bookmarked at least twenty hilarious passages to go back and read again for a last chuckle before returning to the library (I may subject you to some of them if the mood hits me before I wind this up). I listened and then read so I could enjoy the nonsense dialogue (both verbal and literary) a second time. Published in 1889 this book is in the Public Domain and available for free download from the Gutenberg Project and probably elsewhere. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited. There are several audio versions, probably all good, but I chose the narration by Hugh Laurie and the delivery was perfect!

The (very lean) plot: Three idle young men (Jerome, George, and Harrison), who seemingly have nothing better to do with their time than to ramble reflectively for hours regarding their hypochondriasis ailments and on every other moronic thought that pops into their heads, decided that although a sea voyage might benefit their health. They did not have the time to do so - but, they mused, wouldn’t it be lovely to book a boat and take a fortnight boat-ride holiday of canals and locks on the river Thames? Although this does sound sublime, these three young swells and their dog Montmorency, are not taking a barge cruise but rather more like a camping trip along the Thames and since they are adept at absolutely nothing but sloth they are in for surprising adventures (surprising to them but not to the reader). The plot here is nothing more than a vehicle for the comical ruminations of Jerome.

Before setting out, the three of them carefully planned – down to the last detail – what they needed to prepare for their trip. If this was today, it would probably read like one of my camping trip lists starting with the essentials: electronics and chargers, blow-up mattress and snuggly bedclothes, wet-wipes, tissues, toilet paper, Tupperware laden food supply, plastic dinner service (shame on me), wine, flashlights, and at least half a dozen family card games. But since it was 1889 the prep and carriage was a lot more cumbersome and there are a few hilarious descriptions of their packing.

n  “…chaos reigned… and then there remained the hampers to do. They began in a light-hearted spirit, and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested. Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon. And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on the butter…and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn’t find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in. They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did (they obviously never watched Last Tango in Paris). After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.”n

Of course, they forgot to pack a can opener and there is also a funny passage describing their attempts to get at the pineapple inside a tin. (Okay, I can't resist, i'm still chuckling so I'm adding the scene below:)

n  "It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting…. George drew out a tin of pine-apple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat, we felt that life was worth living after all…Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found...Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup….Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it…It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that day…Harris got off with merely a flesh wound…We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry—but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it."n

They had a tarp cover of sorts and frame to protect them from the rain (and there was plenty of it)…their struggle to construct the covering had me giggling (too bad they couldn’t hop over to the convenience store at the gas station near my house – they could have bought a tent that pops open to a three room villa for $20)!

On their sightseeing tour they were lost in a maze for a few hours with about twenty other people who were lost inside including the staff member who came in to help them find their way out.

One night, after mooring the boat and heading into the town for a pub, on the way back, it was raining so hard they decided to spend the night in town but there were no rooms to be let. They considered punching a policeman but then they mused that the policemen might just punch them back instead of hauling them in to spend the night in jail.

By the end of he story Jerome was pooped…he felt he had been put upon and that the others should share in the work (his rationale):

n  “I said I thought Harris would have been showing a more proper spirit if he had suggested that he and George should work, and let me rest a bit. It seemed to me that I was doing more than my fair share of the work on this trip, and I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject. It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for anymore. I shall have to throw out a wing soon. And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do….”n

To be honest, I had never heard of Jerome K. Jerome, before reading a review of this book by GR Friend Peter. I was sure it must be a pen-name for Oscar Wilde, because it was Wilde who popped into my head as soon as the humorous rambling began. Jerome K. Jerome was in fact a writer of the same period and may have traveled the same literary circles, but they do not appear to have been friends. I read a little blurb on the internet suggesting that it might even have been Jerome who outed Wilde in one of the former’s publications, but the latter was hardly discreet.

Maybe 3.5. Very silly, a bit odd and thoroughly enjoyable,

The ridiculously short review - Three hypochondriacs - JKJ, George and Harris - (and their dog, Montmorency) decide to go on a boating holiday on the Thames in order to recuperate from all the maladies in the world that, they firmly decide, have manifested in them. Hilarity ensues.

The "slightly" longer review - This gem of a book is laugh-out loud from start to finish. JKJ reminds you of P.G Wodehouse a bit, in his style of writing (I know JKJ was before Wodehouse, but I read the latter's works first) though, somehow, I found JKJ's style more easy to read than Wodehouse's. It is simple, direct and the humour is just as relevant and witty even today.

The book is generously peppered with witty anecdotes, hilarious observances and even the occasional sombre moments. JKJ, I felt, is at his best when he is recounting something that happened in the past, or explaining a hypothetical situation, rather than when he's recounting what's happening in the current trip or going all poetic while describing Mother Nature.

Some of the parts that I nearly choked while laughing were -

* When JKJ explains what putting up a tent in rainy weather entails.
* The time Uncle Podger decided to hang a picture frame on the wall.
* The time they used an oil-stove to cook food.
* The time he decided to carry some cheese home for a friend.
* The time Harris and he got lost in the maze at Hampton Courts.
* When he explains, just how exactly, tow-lines are a health hazard.
* The time he always ran into the same couple getting cosy, no matter where he went.
* "Harris and the Swans, a remarkable story"

I'll finish with a few quotes from the book - if that shouldn't make one read the book then I dont know what will!

That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

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.

Montmorency's ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at.

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating. It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day. 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.

The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast. There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying last spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to "set fair." It was simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn't quite make matters out. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up and pointed to "very dry."
tI tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and the rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again, and the pointer went round towards "set fair," "very dry," and "much heat," until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn't go any further. It tried its best, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesy fine weather any harder than it did without breaking itself. It evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, and sunstroke, and simooms, and such things, but the peg prevented it, and it had to be content with pointing to the mere commonplace "very dry."

[On George's new hat] - George put it on, and asked us what we thought of it. Harris said that, as an object to hang over a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds away, he should respect it; but that, considered as an article of dress for any human being, it made him ill.

I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite interesting.

People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

We had knocked those three old gentlemen off their chairs into a general heap at the bottom of the boat, and they were now slowly and painfully sorting themselves out from each other, and picking fish off themselves; and as they worked, they cursed us - not with a common cursory curse, but with long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the whole of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included all our relations, and covered everything connected with us - good, substantial curses.

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

We went into the parlour and sat down. There was an old fellow there, smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began chatting. He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow.

Este livro conta de um modo Hilário, divertido e delicioso a história de 3 homens, George,Harris e J. (Não se esqueçam do cachorro) que estão estressados com suas vidas diárias em Londres e decidem então partir em um passeio de barco ao longo do rio Tâmisa. Além das inúmeras trapalhadas que vão surgindo durante a viagem, junte se a isso as várias histórias contadas por eles, que abrilhanta ainda mais esse livro que durante a maior parte do tempo me fez rir muito.

O livro além do fato de ser muito engraçado, é um livro também sobre amizade verdadeira, honestidade, integridade, coragem, enfim sobre quase tudo! . Mas tem muita zoação também! É um livro para todas as idades.

Este livro originalmente era para ser uma guia de viagem pelo Tâmisa entre Kingston e Oxford, mas acabou se transformando nessa deliciosa obra-prima. Com certeza essa foi uma das novelas mais engraçadas e divertidas que já li.

Zasiadłam raz jeszcze do lektury "Trzech panów". Dobra wiadomość jest taka, że powieść Jerome'a wciąż pozostaje jednym z moich ulubionych klasyków. Jestem prostym człowiekiem - gdy ktoś podaje mi na tacy typowy angielski humor, parskam bez opamiętania.
Mimo upływu lat nadal nie zapałałam sympatią do warstwy historycznej. Nie oznacza to jednak, że przymykam na nią oko. Ogromnie doceniam, jak zręcznie autor połączył andegdoty prostych turystów-hipochondryków ze sferą opowiastek w całości poświęconych możnym.

Niedawno odkryłam, że powieść ma swoją kontynuację - już zacieram rączki.

Timeless.


Bonus points for having a dog.