Name: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
Rating: 3.9140625 (64 reviews)
ISBN: 9798577505257

Jerome K Jerome

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

Gold Premium Edition

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Bekki

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was.  

I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. 

 I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. 

 I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight.  

Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.  

Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with.

  I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

“Very well, then,” said my friend’s wife, rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall take the children and go to an hotel until those cheeses are eaten.  I decline to live any longer in the same house with them.”

I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper.  

“Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day,” it would say on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, waiting for the rain. — And people would pass the house, going off in wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen. 

“Ah!” we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, “won’t they come home soaked!” 

And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens of seaweed and cockle shells.  

By twelve o’clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin. 

“Ah! they’ll come in the afternoon, you’ll find,” we said to each other.  “Oh, won’t those people get wet.  What a lark!” 

At one o’clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we weren’t going out, as it seemed such a lovely day. 

“No, no,” we replied, with a knowing chuckle, “not we.  We don’t mean to get wet—no, no.” 

And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched than ever. 

 But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it. 

The next morning we would read that it was going to be a “warm, fine to set-fair day; much heat;” and we would dress ourselves in flimsy things, and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would commence to rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.

Jerome K. Jerome

George, William, and J. agree on one thing. They're overworked and need a rest. A week on "the rolling deep" — they decide — may be just the thing! So off they go with Montmorency, the dog, anticipating the joys of long, lazy days during a glorious Victorian summer. What happens to these bungling bachelors on a two-week rowing excursion up the Thames provides fodder for one of the best-known classics of English humor. Jerome's timeless comedy follows the trio's misadventures as they struggle with camping equipment and meal preparation, confront rampant hypochondria and unreliable weather, and contend with other disasters — all of which trumpet simple truths that still resonate today.

(To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Three Men in a Boat

𝚕𝚒𝚕𝚢

4 ★ - (really liked it)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a new favorite to be sure! It reminded me of Jeeves & Wooster - except Victorian - and it was quite hilarious, the same type of British humor. I laughed out loud quite a lot and there pieces that conveyed the loveliest imagery. I'm very glad I decided to read this when I did XD

To Say Nothing of the Dog ; Three Men on the Bummel

Gayathri Jinesh

This is a lazy saturday afternoon read. The humor is amusing, it made me laugh out loud at times too. The book doesn't have any emotions, but it does give you a feeling of... insouciance. After reading there's nothing of it left in my head, except for few incidences and jokes. An "enjoy as you read" book.

Belle

The first third or so is really fun, but once they get going on the river it's super tedious. I skipped a bunch of chunks that just talk about boating or the river.

Amir M 

As a "humor" book, it's a well-written and timeless one. you can still feel close to characters nearly 130 years after it's been published.
And if that's not enough for you, there's an Audiobook version read by Hugh Laurie. He's done an absolutely brilliant job portraying the characters and he deserves to be praised for it. I enjoyed every minute of listening to this audiobook and strongly recommend it to anyone have an interest in this genre.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers - the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.The three men are based on Jerome himself and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom J. often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog." The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity.

Sarah Escorsa

So this is the second time I try to read this classic but for some reason I just can't get past the first 50 pages... All the people I know that have read Three Men in a Boat loved it and think it one of the funniest books ever written. Well this is a mystery too me as I simply find the book boring and don't enjoy Jerome's writing at all... I really wanted to like this book but it just didn't happen.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Gold Premium Edition

Reviews

Highlights