Eight members of our group enjoyed a convivial evening at The Hundred of Ashendon pub, discussing (among other things) our recent read of this highly entertaining classic.
Three Men in a Boat has never been out of print since it was first published in 1912 and, as with all the older books we have read, we had an impressive array of different editions. These ranged from a 1956 115th edition through to the 2004 Penguin Classics publication, a badly proofed version that had come free with a magazine, and, one of our members even read the book on her Kindle. The latter was genuinely surprised to find that it was written so long ago.
We all understood the 'Kindle surprise' as, despite being over 100 years old, this is a timeless tale.
Jerome meanders through a series of events and incidents that were experienced by him and two friends (young men) during a (camping)'lads' holiday in a (small) river boat on the Thames! The story is told with much use of authors licence and oodles of Victorian sentimentality.
The era is only given away by references to lodging houses, land ladies, tradesmen's delivery 'boys' and steam trains. Oh and by the disparaging comments about women that illustrate a time when women must surely have been quite dim! So dim in fact that they sat around looking pretty while the boys did the work!
We all agreed that this book is absolutely hilarious. Even the somewhat graphic descriptions of river reality are funny: a dead dog floating by, a dead water rat delivered by the dog, rogues collecting money for 'trespass' and so on. The genuinely funny stories are usually of little happenings that could only happen to 'them' such as getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, inappropriate laughter (the German song), making Irish Stew, opening (well failing to open) a tin of pineapple, losing one's shirt to the river etc. What's clever is that JKJ manages to get the humour across without the usual requirement of 'having to have been there' to find it funny.
Did we enjoy it? Yes and we loved the characters who, despite the crisis' and the discomfort they encountered, had a jolly good time.
Would we recommend it? Absolutely yes and the school teachers in the group are already trying to work out how to fit it into the national curriculum! This is a must read for anyone of any age.
Some of us felt we enjoyed this book even more because we know the area and recognise the places they visited. For anyone who would like to see a river camping boat similar to the one our three men travelled in I recommend a visit to the Racing and Riverboat museum in Goring.
We will be meeting on Thursday 9th January 2014 at 20:00 at The Ashendon Hundred (pub). Julia Sallabank has kindly offered to 'host'. We will be discussing Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole AND our planned book group trip to Paris.
I am often asked to describe our group and I tell people we are very relaxed and enjoy our bi-monthly meetings as an opportunity to get together to chat and share a common love of reading. Tonight a gentleman sat on the table next to us during our meeting backed that up with his comments as we were leaving: "What an entertaining evening I've had listening in - you spent almost as much time making plans as you did discussing a great read."
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