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    Three Men In A Boat
    Three Men In A Boat
    Three Men In A Boat
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    Three Men In A Boat

    Written by Jerome K. Jerome

    Narrated by Hugh Laurie

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Three Men In A Boat ranks as one of the most amusing and agreeable books in the English language. Written soon after Jerome’s marriage, it bubbles over with the happiness he felt. Rather than recording one particular trip, the story combines many boating excursions which Jerome had made with his friends. The three men round on each other when things go wrong but nothing serious mars the essentially sunny, idyllic nature of the book. The beautiful countryside through which its heroes pass is poetically described.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Copyright Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780002491
    Author

    Jerome K. Jerome

    Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in 1859 and was brought up in London. He started work as a railway clerk at fourteen, and later was employed as a schoolmaster, actor and journalist. He published two volumes of comic essays and in 1889 Three Men in a Boat. This was an instant success. His new-found wealth enabled him to become one of the founders of The Idler, a humorous magazine which published pieces by W W Jacobs, Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others. In 1900 he wrote a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, which follows the adventures of the three protagonists on a walking tour through Germany. Jerome married in 1888 and had a daughter. He served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front during the First World War and died in 1927.

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    Reviews for Three Men In A Boat

    4/5

    2,075 ratings156 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Hugh Laurie brought this book to life with his reading of it and made me laugh out loud at several points. This is a fun and light confection of a book.
    • 3/5
      A nice, short, witty book. It's not a very funny book, IMO, but it's worth a quick read and some quotes are to be remembered."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."
    • 5/5
      This classic comic fiction was first published in 1889. The 1982 Pavilion edition contains many illustrations, and is introduced and very fully annotated by Christopher Matthew and Benny Green. So much background information necessitated an index to rediscover it all - which could hardly exclude the story itself, so the adventures of George, Harris, the narrator and the dog are duly detailed there among the historical and geographical notes. The index, by Anthony Raven, makes three and a half pages printed in four columns (to the 188 pages of text), and distinguishes typographically between references to the annotations and references to the original text, but includes both impartially.
    • 5/5
      What a complete little gem this is! A quick read, only 100 pages, but I laughed from beginning to end. I was needing something funny to read, and this quickie really worked. Recommended!
    • 4/5
      This short book was written in the late 1800s and tells the tale of three men and a dog who take a boating trip up the Thames. It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation meant to cure the men of their self-diagnosed ailments. Unfortunately, the voyage becomes a series of misadventures, usually with hysterical results.I read this book in preparation for reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. The dog in Three Men in a Boat is Montmorency, a fox terrier who accompanies the incompetent men on their trip. My understanding is that the Willis book is a take off on Jerome's.Jerome's book is full of slap-stick humor as we follow the three Victorian bunglers up the river. Generally, they face a problem, such as not having a can opener, that then needs to be solved. In this case, the men try to open the can by hitting it with everything from a rock to the ship's mast. Along the way, the men get in and out trouble, meet numerous zany characters, learn to play the banjo, sing songs, and tell tales of young women.I did find the book to be funny, but about three quarters of the way through, my mind began to wander and I started skimming along to the end. It is a charming tale, but the constant humor was a bit wearing. If I were more of a fan of slap-stick, I think I would have liked this book better. Nonetheless, I do recommend it--especially for those of you who go for the excessively silly (which is not a bad thing!).
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully whimsical. Narrated with a voice befitting the journey. Thank you.
    • 4/5
      This is a free Feedbooks ebook, It was written in the 1880's, the subject is a boat trip down the Thames. It was originally intended as a serious travelogue, but the author's goofy hypochondriac travel-mates turned the trip into a series of comic misadventures. I never realized that our Victorian forbears were such goofballs. It's a fun, light and easy read.
    • 5/5
      Three men and a dog decided to take a boat trip.What will happen for them?Do you think this trip will be fun?This is one of my best books!This book is at Stage 4 but I thought it wasn't so difficult and easy to imagine the situation .I lauched a lot and really enjoyed it.I'll recommend this to my friends.
    • 5/5
      As Three Men in a Boat opens, J. airs out his various ailments with his fellow invalids (re: closest friends), George and William Samuel Harris, and with his canine companion, Montmorency. According to a book J. discovered in a library, he is a veritable hospital packed with every disease known to mankind—with the notable exception of housemaid's knee, much to his chagrin. As a remedy, the gents decide to head out on the River Thames for a fortnight's worth of adventuring in a bid to cure one another of the general malaise of the nineteenth-century. Of course, the river has other plans in mind for our wandering heroes…Between navigational challenges and mealtime disasters, and between epic battles with vicious swans, tea kettles, and an impossible tin of pineapple, the three men struggle to survive their pleasant jaunt along the river while offering a glimpse into the delightful pandemonium afforded by life on England open waters.Jerome K. Jerome proves to be the King of Conversational Tangents, and he has a flair for exaggeration—it's often his extravagant descriptions of river-based anger and cursing that put me over the edge, and his ability to distract with side stories is impressive to witness. I thought Victorians were a stiff and stilted lot, but Jerome has proven me daft and wrong. In fact, all who do not read said book will have to be firebomed. I would apologize, except that it is the right thing to do.Ideal for: Former deniers of Victorian literature; Fans of P.G. Wodehouse and other clever, silver-tongued British authors; Readers in need of a meandering, episodic jaunt (both literary and nautical).
    • 4/5
      Three Men in a Boat is the funniest book I have read in years. It is also a pleasant look at 19th century recreation and a travelogue of the sites between London and Oxford and their histories.Three young men, all loungers and hypochondriacs, resolve to take a boat trip up the Thames for the sake of their health. From their preparations to the journey's end, it is one zany episode after another. Much of the humor is slapstick: erecting a tent, running aground, and coping with the elements. Other episodes are parodies of human nature: fishermen's tall tales, girls towing a boat, and the "etiquette" of the river.On the somewhat more serious side, we do learn a lot about what young men (and women) in the 1880s did for recreation. It was a time when fresh water boating had ceased to become a means of transportation (thanks to the railroad) and was becoming, as it is today, a major leisure industry. Jerome also gives us some mini-lectures on the history of the towns and villages through which the trio pass. He provides a vivid, and devoutly serious, description of what it must have looked like the day the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede. He is less serious when he describes an artifact at a riverside church: 'There is an iron “scold’s bridle” in Walton Church. They used these things in ancient days for curbing women’s tongues. They have given up the attempt now. I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing else would be strong enough.'Jerome's mock-serious tone of self-parody closely resembles that of Mark Twain. Three Men in a Boat is simply great fun. But this is a book to avoid reading in churches, libraries, funeral parlors, or any other place where silence and solemnity must be maintained. You are liable to injure yourself in the attempt.
    • 4/5
      Silly and entertaining.
    • 4/5
      Jerome K. Jerome wrote a leisurely chronicle of a summer's boating holiday on the Thames. It was published in 1889 when he was only thirty years old. It was a success as a popular humorous book and has remained in print to this day. While some of the book is pure farce his main approach to humor was understatement and outrageous exaggeration in a style that reminds one of some of Twain's comic writings. He described his technique thus:"Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing: but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous---almost pedantic---veracity, that the experienced angler is seen."His humor relies on the diabolic malice of inanimate objects when they escape from civilization: of the infrangibility of cans when the can opener has been left behind, the ingenuity of an untended rope, the cunning of kettles and leaking kerosene. His narrator is known simply as J. while his companions are Harris and George (though they are somewhat shadowy characters) and of course there is Montmorency, the dog."To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and -nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen."With a convivial narrator and two friends, to say nothing of the dog, this tale of a boat trip is simply one of the funniest and most delightful short books that I have ever read.
    • 3/5
      Fun, funny, and short! The claims that the book has too much purple prose is true.
    • 4/5
      Three bumbling and indolent young men decide they need a holiday, so they take a boat trip up the Thames. They plan a relaxing, lazy, back-to-nature trip but of course things don't go quite as planned for these three inept friends and the outcome is hilarious. [Three Men in a Boat] was written in 1889 and has never been out of print. It provides a very colorful and interesting peek into the Victorian era, and most of it is very funny if a little too slap-stick at times. It's a very enjoyable, light read, and great for a laugh. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      This book is a strange mix. Part of it is of a particular kind of obvious humour. Sort of like watching a very pompous-looking person talking loudly into their cell-phone and paying no attention to where they are going and therefore fails to notice the banana skin everyone else has been avoiding. Bamm, down she goes, and hahaha, its just so funny, you have to laugh. There are also amusing incidents with the fox terrier Montmorency, whose chief pleasures in life seem to be fighting and hanging out with packs of street dogs. One gets the impression that JKJ wouldn't at all mind being reincarnated as an immoral, street-fighting, anarchic dog in the care of very liberal and approving owners.

      The book is full of side-stories, none of them particularly interesting and some of them absolutely dire. Near the end was a highly-romanticised account of a woman with an illegitimate baby committing suicide by drowning. How the waters lovingly embraced her and gave her peace. That's what's wrong with this book. Highly amusing incidents intermixed with purple prose, a travelogue of some of England's most boring towns, and whatever struck the author as (I want to say interesting, but I don't believe it really) something that would fill in the narrative and be 'educational'. A good editor could cut this to a really wonderful funny book only about a third-long. In this case the abridged version would be a hell of a lot better than the original and I would have given it more than 3-stars.

      So humour - 5 stars
      Travelogue and lyrical pieces - 1 star
      Montmorency - 3 stars

      Av. 3 stars.

    • 4/5
      This review is for the audiobook edition. For a review of the text, see my review of the Kindle edition.

      I don't often rate the audiobook less than the text (partly because if I am hating the narration I will dump the audio). However, I do so in this instance, even though I thought that Steven Crossley did a fine narration, for two reasons.

      1) Unfortunately I found the sound quality to be a little uneven; the biggest issue was that at times his voice seemed to be fading away even though I hadn't changed the volume. I don't know if that was part of the recording or an issue with my individual download but it was noticeable enough to be disconcerting especially in the car.

      2) The illustrations in my Kindle edition were so enjoyable and added to the fun of the book so I felt that in this case, the text had to have a higher rating than the audio.
    • 4/5
      Ridiculous and hilarious. Lots of digressions, confusions, amusements, &c. The bit about trying to get the cover over the boat had me in complete hysterics.
    • 3/5
      Always humorous.
    • 3/5
      Inspired to read after To Say Nothing of the Dog. Breezy reading, occasionally amusing, eventually boring. Dropped after about 11 chapters.
    • 3/5
      Happy to have read this, only to enjoy the occasional long-winded lyrical passage and droll story, and because, sadly, this is a classic of British literature. Malcolm Bradbury put it quite well in DOCTOR CRIMINALE: "So when you thought about it 1889 was quite a year, right across Europe – the time of Freud and Nietzsche, Ibsen and Zola, Max Nordau and Max Weber. In fact it was the great year of Modernismus, modern thought. And in Britain that year…well, in Britain that year, the British, as the British do, were coming along just a little late. The book of the year…was Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat."
    • 3/5
      Mildly humorous. Not the laugh out loud type, but still an amusing read. Found out there is an old movie which I would like to see.
    • 3/5
      The comedic effect is by turns helped and hurt by this book's overwhelming British-ness.
    • 5/5
      If you don't get 5 or 6 really huge laughs out of this, then I doubt much can be done to help you.
    • 4/5
      As part of my plan to knock off TBR books quicker by checking out audio versions, I started this book just at the tail end of last year, but didn't make enough progress before holidays, so picked it back up this month. But there were problems: My first audio, checked out from my local library, was a popular edition with holds, so my check-out expired before I could finish it and I couldn't renew - there are currently still 2 holds on it before mine. When I went to dig out my paperback copy to finish reading it, I couldn't find it. I remember showing it to MT because he'd heard mention of the book somewhere, and now neither of us can find it. Not a happy camper. Because my library copy has numerous holds, I went to a neighbouring system I have a card with and checked out their audio edition - a different one, but it's narrated by Hugh Laurie, and he can't suck right? Right. But when it ended much sooner than I expected it to, I discovered it's abridged. SO - I'm reviewing it anyway and when I get home there will be a possibly violent rummage through the house and the paperback will be found. At which point I will figure out what I missed. It doesn't really matter though, because the book is lovely. Light, amusing, entertaining and often poetic. While Hugh Laurie was brilliant, I think I have to give an extra nudge to Frederick Davidson's edition. He adds a certain ironic gravitas to his reading that makes lightly amusing anecdotes hilarious. Highly recommended in any form.
    • 5/5
      Very few can write as delightfully as this book, with such a rousing yet harmless humor that graces all it touches. A childhood favorite; still a good tale that makes one want to get in a boat and start paddling.
    • 3/5
      This book written in the 1800's was written as a travel guide but is now presented as humor. I found the humor rather like some British TV Comedy (for example 'Faulty Towers') somewhat predictable and over the top. I grew tired of it before it was done.
    • 4/5
      In which an otherwise sensible dog takes a trip up the Thames with three hapless humans, and somehow manages to come out of it unscathed. As do the humans, one of whom tells the tale. It's Wodehouse witty, and owes much to Twain as well. Hang on to your sculls, because you'll laugh 'til you squeak for breath one minute, and be moved to find a good biography of Queen Matilda or Edward the Confessor in the next.Reviewed in 2012
    • 4/5
      I had read this back in 2011, and didn't understand why it was considered a comic classic, but one of my reading groups chose it and I thought it might be funnier if I listened to it.This is a perfect example of arch, late 19th century British silliness. Listening to it was eventually better than reading it. The first third or so was deadly, and I actually fell asleep. But I persevered, and also sped up the audio just a little bit (1.2), and the rest of the book gained in humor. Some of the small, serious interludes are thought-provoking as well.The three men in question (and the dog) decide to take a boat trip the way young men might decide to take a motorcycle getaway these days. There's a lot about the Thames itself, and if I were familiar with the river that part would have been much more interesting. Some of the small, serious interludes are thought-provoking as well.
    • 3/5
      First published in 1889, this book has travelled well - the humour still works.It paints a picture of a different social era, one of a slower pace than society today, but where the instincts of individuals are not that different from today. But there are also dark spots - the body in the river of the woman who committed suicide after an illegitimate birth provides a jarring note.The scenic highlights have not changed much - it is easy to follow the course of the trip in Google and Google maps - the landmarks are still there - as are a surprising number of the old inns.A good read.
    • 3/5
      I started to read this for about the 3rd time and I still couldn't get through the book. My English teacher (whom I loved) said it was laugh out loud funny but I quickly got bored of the book. Maybe I will try again another time.