Maybe I didn't read it at the right time, but it wasn't very appealing to me.

The memorable sentences of the book:

Time passes quickly and the characteristics of a person also change with the passage of time!

...

The passage of time changes a person's standards.

...

Nothing is really big or small; rather, it is in comparison with other things that it seems big or small.

...

Whenever he wasn't forced to be king, he could think correctly.

This book presents some interesting perspectives on time and human nature. It makes us realize that time is a powerful force that can bring about significant changes in our lives. The idea that nothing is absolute in terms of size or importance is also quite thought-provoking. It encourages us to view things from different angles and not to be too quick to judge. Overall, although the book may not have been overly captivating for me initially, it does contain some valuable insights that are worth considering.

This is a very frustrating book. In some parts, it is brilliant,展现出 extraordinary creativity and depth. However, in other parts, it is annoyingly tedious and just plain boring. Overall, despite these flaws, I did like it and I am glad that I persevered.

The hardest work and the most boring sections were the passages concerning the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. Once the novelty and dilemmas of being tiny in a world of 'giants' and vice versa had been established, there were seemingly endless descriptions of how small things were or how big things were at the respective destinations. Unfortunately, this became extremely tedious and repetitive.

Nevertheless, I am extremely glad that I persevered. The voyages to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan were, for the most part, fascinating. As a prototype of political satire, it is effective and hugely influential.

Having seen various film adaptations, I never knew that the story extended beyond Lilliput and Brobdingnag. So, the book was somewhat of a revelation.

My advice to anyone who is tempted not to bother is to persevere beyond the tedium of the first 20% or so of the book. What follows will definitely be worth the effort.

Jonathan Swift creates a masterpiece in 1726, a book against the corrupt society and colonial governors of that era in Britain.

And on a larger stage, a book that shockingly portrays the worst characteristics of humanity.

The fourth part of this book is extremely amazing! I got a great deal of pleasure from reading it.

Note: Translated by Ferial Sheikh Al-Islam, published in 1983.

It may seem like a simple adventure story; however, the truth is that this narration hides a profound reflection on the darkest side of human nature.

At first glance, the tale might appear to be just a series of exciting events and thrilling escapades. But as one delves deeper into the narrative, it becomes evident that there is much more beneath the surface.

The story likely explores the hidden desires, fears, and impulses that lurk within each of us. It may show how in certain situations, people can be driven to act in ways that are contrary to their normal moral compass.

Perhaps it presents characters who face difficult choices and are forced to confront the uglier aspects of themselves. Through their experiences, we are invited to reflect on our own人性 and the potential for darkness that exists within all of us.

This simple adventure story thus becomes a powerful vehicle for self-reflection and a reminder of the complexity and often-hidden nature of human beings.

I wasn't truly aware of the real nature of Swift's classic.

I always had the perception that it was simply a fairytale about the remarkable lands and people that Gulliver encounters during his travels.

However, what Swift actually accomplishes in Gulliver's Travels is much more profound. He takes a significant stance against the status quo of all times.

He does this through a delicate, yet witty satire and a subtle sense of humor.

The astonishing thing is that he delves into subjects that were likely considered taboo back then and proposes ideas that were rather heretical.

As a result, he presents a work of fiction that still seems as modern as ever.

So, what became of those two stars?

Original as his ideas might be, his writing style made the reading experience a bit of a struggle for me.

At times, it felt as if I was stagnating at the same point for several pages.

Perhaps it's just my personal perspective, but it was the first time I read something that truly resonated with me while simultaneously being so challenging to enjoy.

A few times, I felt my patience wearing thin and toyed with the idea of giving up, but I never did. Besides, I really appreciated the ideas that lay beneath the words.

Story-wise, it earns 5 stars, but overall, I give it 3.

I don't remember the last time I actually abandoned a book. Usually, I attempt to power through even those books that I don't like, just so I can get the most complete picture of it. I also hold this idea that if a book makes me abandon it, then it has beaten me.

However, at this point, I need to be really honest with myself. This just isn't going to happen. I simply can't read this book without constantly thinking about all the other things I could be reading instead. I suppose this book has beaten me, but I prefer it over me beating my head against the wall.

Now, I know there are those who will shake their head at my reaction to this book. Some will say the book was over my head, or that I lack the appreciation for the finer things in life. Or perhaps they will claim that I hate classics, or satire, or whatever. They will say I didn't "get" the book.

Though this may be true to some extent, it doesn't change my reaction. I mean, I do understand the satire; I really do (it's not like it's subtle or anything). I simply don't care about it. The things in the book that were meant to have shock value, like giants peeing on people or men being shoved into giant breasts, don't shock me at all. Sure, you might say, "Well, they were shocking for their time! It's about context, you fuzz brain!" Again, you might be right, but I simply can't be made to care.

Which brings me to my ultimate problem: the book hasn't made me feel anything. I don't feel any aspect of the story, I don't feel the shock of the outlandish action, and I don't feel anything about any of it (except for the feeling of wanting it to be over with as soon as possible).

While I'm reading, it is hard not to hear white-noise take over my brain. White-noise is about as interesting, and the dictionary blows this book out of the water when it comes to reading joy.

I'm going to go read something else now and forget all about this book.

I had been for several hours extremely tormented by the demands of nature. This was hardly a surprise, as it had been nearly two days since I had last relieved myself. I found myself in a most difficult situation, torn between the urgent need and the feeling of shame.

I managed to go as far as the length of my chain would allow and relieved my body of that uncomfortable burden.

Due care was taken every morning before the arrival of company, ensuring that the offensive matter was removed in wheelbarrows by two servants assigned specifically for that purpose.

I truly wonder what diabolical scheme of employment could possibly be worse than that of the two Lilliputian servants and their reliable wheelbarrows. It seems almost inconceivable that there could be a more unpleasant or degrading task. The very thought of it makes one's skin crawl.

Yet, in this strange land of Lilliput, such was the reality. The servants must have endured this unenviable duty day in and day out, perhaps with a sense of resignation or acceptance.

It makes me reflect on the different ways in which people are forced to carry out tasks that are far from desirable.

This was truly an arduous task to get through. It is an older classic, and one can definitely tell. The writing style is extremely tedious, consisting of long sentences and paragraphs that stretch on for pages without any breaks. The language employed is overly antiquated, and the story itself isn't particularly captivating.

The narrative follows a man who embarks on a journey to four distinct destinations. In the first place, the people are minuscule. In the second, they are giants. In the third, the people are overly intelligent or philosophical. And in the fourth, the people and horses are on equal footing, yet the people are barbarians (?). Each place he visits presents him with bizarre and extraordinary situations. It was indeed very strange.

I comprehend that this work is a form of satire and that the author likely has a deeper and more profound message to convey. However, it is just so incredibly boring. I would not read this again even if someone were to pay me.

Let’s face it. Jonathan Swift was a snarky, snarky bitch.

Gulliver’s Travels is like a giant pimp slap across the human face and I am so glad I finally read this in a non-school, non-structured environment because I had a whole lot more fun with it this time around. Swift’s wit, insight and delivery are often remarkable. He crams more well thought out jabs and toe-steppings in this slim 250-page novel than one would think possible in a work twice as long.

This is a classic that people should read outside of required scholarly endeavors as many of the ills Swift addressed are still relevant today. While he is short on resolutions, he does a great job of exposing problems.

From a plot perspective, it’s a series of adventures to fictional worlds. Swift uses these to scathe, rebuke, and question various institutions and groups. Few were spared from his caustic lens.

Overall, I thought it was worthwhile. Some of my favorites include the parody of political infighting, the satire of religious differences, the jab at traditions, the anti-war statement, and the depiction of the Laputans.

However, I wasn’t as blown away as I’d hoped. The prose was serviceable but lacked eloquence. Some critiques fell flat for me. And the ending was too ambiguous. I wanted Swift to clearly state his protagonist’s case.

3.0 to 3.5 stars. Still, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

I’ve been delving into How to Read Literature, and he briefly mentioned this book. I’m quite certain I first read it in my 20s, yet I might not have completed it. This time around, I had no recollection of the Houyhnhnms at all. Given that they are a significant aspect of the end of the book (and indeed, of the book itself), I can only surmise that I stopped reading before reaching that point. The real reason I read it this time was because a great deal of the research I’ve been conducting at work is related, in one way or another, to intercultural understanding. It suddenly occurred to me that this book might contain some wonderful quotes that I could incorporate into the journal articles we are currently writing, adding a touch of color to them. However, that hasn’t quite turned out to be the case, but it has definitely set me thinking.

This is truly an outstanding book. It’s almost impossible to overemphasize just how remarkable it is. And it really hasn’t aged in the ways one might expect, considering it was written in 1726. I mean, it is still highly readable. The intervening 300 years have, of course, left their mark on the language, but not to the extent that the prose is incomprehensible.

I shared with a friend that I was reading this, and she said she had written an essay about it at university and still adored the book. Someone else I knew years ago, who had studied literature at university, once told me that the books you love from university are the ones you received a good grade for in an essay you wrote about them. This is more cynical than sceptical, but still rather amusing. I told my friend that I felt strange about reading this book this time because I had been seeking ideas on intercultural understanding, yet I’ve come away wondering if anyone other than someone from Ireland could have written this book. As a somewhat strange Irishman myself, this makes me sound decidedly not very interculturally understanding. I don’t really know all that much about Swift’s life, but I think one would need to feel like both an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ to have written this book. And the Anglo-Irish were pretty much in that position – inside and outside at the same time, I mean. I also think that being in that position is a rather good ‘place’ to be. A full sense of belonging can be perilously close to a universal evil, particularly when it allows us to determine who ‘doesn’t belong’. White Australia’s attitude towards asylum seekers is a tragic example of this.

This is satire, but there certainly isn’t a laugh on every page in this book. Much of the humour is ‘clever’ in the sense that you are meant to perceive the underlying absurdity of the situation. And the trustworthiness of what we are reading is challenged from the very first page. Essentially, the first thing that occurs in the book is that we are informed that the person who edited the manuscript admits to cutting out approximately half of the contents that Gulliver had written in his manuscript. Immediately following this, there is a letter from Gulliver in which he disowns the book that follows. Then we are told that Gulliver’s original manuscript no longer exists. Little of Gulliver’s letter makes sense to us at this point, since we are not yet supposed to have any inkling that we are Yahoos or what a Houyhnhnm is. Still, despite not having sufficient information to understand this letter until the end of the book, it is quite evident from Gulliver’s tone that he is far from happy about either what has been done to his manuscript or with the book’s reception. He had hoped that it would have transformed human nature. So, it’s not your typical travel book, then.

Swift masterfully plays with the absurdity of the situations he creates. At one point, when Gulliver is in Lilliput, he is accused of having an affair with one of the women there. He struggles to defend himself, offering all sorts of excuses as to why this would be impossible, aside from the rather obvious defence that he is as many feet tall as she is inches tall.
In Brobdingnag, where he faces the opposite problem of being confronted with people who are effectively giants compared to him, there is a fascinating inversion. He is almost worked to death by the farmer who puts him on display. I call it an inversion because the West not only had a habit of exhibiting people from other lands but even had human zoos. This rather unpleasant practice persisted until the early 20th century, long enough for us to have actual photographs of these ‘exhibits’.
There is a wonderful and scathing discussion of law and lawyers in the book, which makes it clear that lawyers have been the target of jokes for a very long time. It essentially states that lawyers are so accustomed to arguing that black is white that if you need to hire one to argue a case for you, it’s probably better to pretend you are in the wrong so they can apply their actual skill set to the task, rather than getting them to argue the justice of your case.
And Swift will often deliver a final, unexpected blow right at the end of a paragraph. One of my favorite passages is: “I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England.”
The Houyhnhnms are a race of horses, yet they are more moral than humans. Gulliver would have liked to spend the rest of his days with these philosopher kings. However, their land has a breed of humans called Yahoos who are presented as degenerate humans, and the Houyhnhnms are concerned that Gulliver, a slightly better example of their kind, might escape to them and cause them to rebel. This part of the story reminded me of, say, Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, where a Western man discovers spiritual enlightenment in a distant land. Gulliver effectively becomes a Houyhnhnm in temperament. Here, though, the enlightenment comes at the expense of a general misanthropy towards his own kind. Gulliver becomes so repulsed by his fellow humans that he can barely tolerate being in the same room as even his own wife and family. In the end, he spends his time in the company of the horses in his stable. We like to believe that travel broadens the mind, but it can also have the opposite effect. It can confirm our prejudices about the inferiority of other nations. If the history of the British Empire teaches us anything, it is that spending time in other nations is not sufficient to encourage us to treat the people in those nations as fellow humans.
But if that is true, the opposite can also hold. Travel can also make us disgusted with our own people. Our desire to belong to groups, to create an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, and our desire to ‘improve’ the world can cause incalculable harm.
This book is, of course, satire, where perhaps no one, other than the horses, emerges unscathed. And even then, the Houyhnhnms and their rational utopia that we are all supposed to strive to emulate are a little too eager to kill Gulliver off on the very remote chance that he might one day cause them some imagined harm.

This is a statement from Paul Bryant's review that truly made me smile: "This is a giant rip off of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Honey I Blew up the Kid."

Gulliver's Travels is an extremely remarkable work. It functions equally effectively as a scathing satire on the human condition, a charming children's story, a thought-provoking morality play, and incidentally, as the source for several enjoyable movie adaptations.

I first encountered it in my childhood through an Urdu translation, then later as a textbook, and finally, by my own choice, I read the entire thing.

The initial two voyages to Liliput and Brobdingnag are filled with great fun. However, after that, the remaining two voyages to Laputa and the land of the yahoos, although rich in profound meaning, are not as memorable.

It presents an interesting sequence of adventures, or rather misadventures. It both entertains and puzzles the reader, making it a truly engaging and complex piece of literature.

I didn't truly have a fondness for this book.

I contemplated awarding the book two stars. However, due to the fact that certain parts were marginally entertaining, I ultimately settled on giving it three stars.

The process of getting into the story was extremely difficult. Some sections were sluggish and seemed to stretch on interminably.

I'm relieved to be able to state that I've finally read it. Nevertheless, it most definitely wouldn't be a book that I would ever choose to pick up again.

It's one of those reads that, while not completely terrible, fails to leave a lasting positive impression.

The slow parts really detracted from the overall enjoyment of the book.

Maybe for some readers, the somewhat entertaining bits would be enough to make it a worthwhile read, but for me, it just didn't quite hit the mark.

Overall, it's a book that I'll likely forget about in the not-too-distant future.