Book Club: Three Men in a Boat

For this year’s Individual Reading lessons I chose a rather interesting book called “Three Men in a Boat”, or, as the “complete” name of the book goes: “Three Men in a Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog).”

It was written in 1899 by Jerome K. Jerome, a British author, and tells a story of three men on a boating trip down the River Thames.

I chose the book because of its genre. It’s a comic novel, and I like reading fun and lighthearted books. After taking a glimpse at the book’s cover, I knew the book is going to be taking place entirely on the boat and there will probably be various antics and comedic mishaps happening in a slapstick fashion. The book’s cover matches the book’s contents well. There is humour, it’s physical and it’s also based on character’s mistakes and own ineptitude. But I’m also glad the book includes the more poetic and “philosophical” passages. I particularly liked the one about how things that weren’t considered important in the past are considered historical relics in the present.

“Will it be the same in the future?  Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before?  Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?  Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?”

I don’t think there are any problems that the book tries to tackle, as it’s just a comical novel.

I think my groupmates could be interested in reading this book, as it is fun and easy to read, and its humour and witticisms are pretty much timeless and can still be understood in spite of the massive time gap between today and the years the book was written in.