Product Description
Suffering every malady in the book, three men and a dog decide to head for a restful vacation on the Thames. Anticipating peace and leisure, they encounter the joys of roughing it, getting their boat stuck in locks, having to eat their own cooking and coping with English weather. ... Read more

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Possibly the Funniest Book Ever Written
OK, the first time I started this book I didn't get the ironic tone and thought it was very plain. I gave it another chance some years later and laughed till I thought I'd have an injury.

I haven't heard Nigel Planer read this but he is brilliant with the Discworld stories (sorry, Tony Robinson doesn't compare). ... Read more

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:IllMEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER—A MERE GLANCE AT THE TERRITORIAL BANKI Had just finished my frugal morning repast and, as my habit was, placed the remains of my modest provisions in the board-room safe, a magnificent safe with a secret lock, which has served me as a store-cupboard during four years, almost, that I have been at the Territorial. Suddenly the governor walks into the offices, with his face all red and eyes inflamed, as though after a night's feasting, draws in his breath noisily, and in rude terms says to me, with his Italian accent:" But this place stinks, Moussiou Passajon." The place did not stink, if you like the word. Only— shall I say it?—I had ordered a few onions to garnish a knuckle of veal which Mmc. Seraphine had sent down to me, she being the cook on the second floor, whose accounts I write out for her every evening. I tried to explain the matter to the governor, but he had flown into a temper, saying that to his mind there was no sense in poisoning the atmosphere of an office in that way, and that it was not worth while to maintain premises at a rent of twelve thousand francs, with eight windows fronting full on the Boulevard Malesherbes, in order to roast onions in them. I don't know what he did not say to me in his passion. For my own part, naturally I got angry at hearing myself addressed in that insolent manner. It is surely the least a man can do to be polite with people in his service whom he does not pay. What the deuce! So I answered him that it was annoying, in truth, but that if theTerritorial Bank paid me what it owed me, namely, four years' arrears of salary, phis seven thousand francs personal advances made by me to the governor for expenses of cabs, newspapers, cigars, and American grogs on board days, I would go and eat decently ... ... Read more

Product Description
Based on a holiday boat trip made by the author and his two real-life friends George and Harris. This humorous travelogue includes local history of towns along the Thames, as well as a few serious and sentimental passages, but remains at its core a comic novel.

Jerome K Jerome (1859-1927) became an actor and published a couple of volumes of humorous pieces and light essays about the theatre. He achieved lasting fame with THREE MEN IN A BOAT. He later went on to become one of the founders of the humorous magazine, The Idler, and continued to write articles and plays. Jeremy Lewis has recently written a biography of Cyril Connolly and has edited the Raffles books.

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information with the latest and most popular ebooks & hot topics at very affordable prices. Our mission is to create positive change in your life. We carry hundreds of unique titles including "Literary Classics" under many categories for your convenience. Please click on the name "Manuel Ortiz Braschi" at the top of the page, next to the title, or write "Manuel Ortiz Braschi" at the search box and you will be taken to our main page in Amazon, where you will be able to check all the interesting, unique and informative titles that we carry at Amazon Kindle. ... Read more

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One of a series of colour-illustrated children's classics, this volume recounts the adventures of three men (not forgetting the dog) who take a boat up the River Thames. ... Read more

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I am a Republican in theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such companionship. They contrived to keep it for a week--till the police found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes. Logically, I do not see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles should be mean, but it struck me that way at the time. It was not the particular steal I had been hoping for. ... Read more

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Jerome K. Jerome Buys His Dreamhouse
They and I is Jerome K. Jerome's story of a city family moving out to the country. Jerome wants to live out his ideal of a quaint, bucolic existence among the hearty yeomen of the country. The locals are not quite quaint enough for him and realities like milking cows in the morning interfere with his daydreams of the good life. On top of that he has to deal with the real wife and children he's brought with him. So much for pastoral idylls.

The book is surprisingly modern in tone, slightly sardonic for a 19th century writer, and a lot of fun. They and I has a kind of Dave Barry meets Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse quality to it, with a little dose of Mark Twain thrown in, and all set in gaslight Victorian England. ... Read more

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Review: I Can't Belive I Said That
I read the autobiography of Kathie-Lee Gifford.The book was based on a girl who was born in a small French town struggled though her upbringing, and managed to make it big.The author made excellent use of various writing tools, including flashbacks, when she describes her childhood.Also, the author was good in the way things were phrased (ex. instead of saying, she didn't have the best teeth, it was stated " so I didn't have a future of starring in toothpaste commercial").It was a good book to read because the author made me feel as though I was there and could feel what was happening.The realistic details made me feel as though I could see the small home in which she was born.I could feel her pain as she experienced her second miscarriage.I was shocked when I learned of her struggle through her first marriage and how she managed to come out stronger then she was when she entered it.
I think this book would appeal to female's readers more so then it would to the male.Obviously, the main character is a woman, therefore the female reader would better relate to the book.This book tells a great story about the exception to America's woman.Instead of being battered and worn, Kathie-Lee, was strong and resilient.She came from a small town, had a hard upbringing, and is now not only a dedicated mother and wife, but also a role-model, and a sucessful actress. ... Read more

Product Description
Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) was an English author, best known for the humourous travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). In 1877, he decided to try his hand at acting, under the stage name Harold Crichton. He joined a repertory troupe who tried to produce plays on a shoestring budget, often drawing on the meager resources of the actors themselves to purchase costumes and props. He tried to become a journalist, writing essays, satires and short stories, but most of these were rejected. Over the next few years he was a school teacher, a packer, and a solicitor’s clerk. Finally, in 1885, he had some success with On the Stage-and Off, a humourous book, the publication of which opened the door for more plays and essays. Other works include Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891), Idle Ideas In 1905 (1905), Fanny and the Servant Problem (1908), The Angel and the Author (1908), They and I (1909), The Master of Mrs Chilvers (1911), Malvina of Brittany (1916), and All Roads Lead to Calvary (1919). ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Young men; Boats and boating; Dogs; Humorous stories, English; Thames River (England); Black Forest (Germany); Fiction / Humorous; Fiction / General; Fiction / Classics; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (77)

It's Abridged!
The audio CD is abridged.It comes with the book, which was unexpected and nice to get.But the photo that says Unabridged is actually of the book, not of the CD.The CD is abridged, alas.

If You Think You Don't Like 19-Century Literature, Read This
Although it was first published in 1889, the writing in this short but absolutely delightful book feels surprisingly modern.Yet Jerome's account of a rowboat and camping trip up the Thames River from Kingston to Oxford also gives the reader a lively and vivid picture of 19th century England.

According to Wickipedia, Three Men in a Boat was originally intended to be a standard travel narrative - a serious travel guide with accounts of local history along the route.But so many funny things happened that it ended up as a comedy.Today we'd call it travel humor.And it truly is laugh-out-loud hilarious!But it still retains plenty of history and information as well.And there are serious parts as well, such as the finding of the body of a young girl who committed suicide, which was based on a real incident.

My favorite story was the one about the stuffed trout and the lying fishermen.

At the (brilliant!) suggestion of another reviewer (Fara Shimbo on Amazon), I followed along on a satellite map as I read.It adds even more to the enjoyment of the book to be able to actually see the places you are reading about.Of course much has changed in the 130 years since the book was written, but some things - Hampton Court, for example - are still the same.You can even see the maze, which makes it clear that Jerome's story of getting lost in it with a crowd of people is greatly exaggerated!
[...]

I enjoyed this book so much that I can't wait to read the sequel, about the same three men who later in life make a bicycle and train journey through Germany.It's called Three Men on a Brummel.

Be warned that, as in many 19th century books, there are a couple of instances that may be offensive: an anti-Semitic remark, and one use of the N-word.I realize that it may not have been considered offensive at the time, simply a descriptive term.But the context in which it is used is also mildly derogatory.The racism isn't as blatant as I've seen in some other classic books, though.But that may just be because the population of England was so racially homogenous at the time - perhaps Jerome just didn't encounter people of other ethnic backgrounds often enough to make many offensive comments about them.


Quotes from Three Men on a Boat:

"It is a curious fact, but nobody ever gets sea-sick on land."(Of course, this was written before the invention of the automobile!)

"That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything himself . . . and put it on the backs of other people."

"Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap treasures 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?"(How fascinating to read this in the years 2000-odd and know that they will indeed be!)

"The water looked damp and chilly."(Damp - how else would water look?A great example of the dry British wit of the the book, subtle bits of humor that could be easily overlooked if the reader is inattentive.)

"I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has been hired by the hour.There is something so beautifully calm and restful about his method.It is so free from that fretful haste, that vehement striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane of nineteenth-century life."(After laughing at the humor, one is struck by how little has changed in the past century!)

"Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly.They want to get away from each other when there is only such a very slight bond as that between them."

"W. Lee, who died in 1637, 'had in his lifetime issue from his loins two hundred lacking but three.'If you work this out you will find that Mr. W. Lee's family numbered one hundred and ninety-seven.Mr. W. Lee - five times Mayor of Abingdon - was, no doubt, a benefactor to his generation, but I hope there are not many of his kind about in this overcrowded nineteenth century."(How interesting that people were concerned about overpopulation in 1889!)

(184 pages)

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome


In spite of its age, this is still one of the most humourous books written in the English language and always retains its freshness.

Perhaps Jerome K Jerome was Bill Bryson's grandfather!
If you can imagine a Bill Bryson comic travelogue written by someone with turn-of-the-20th-century Victorian sensibilities and a typical laid back yet biting, caustic British sense of humour ... then you have a pretty good handle on what to expect when you read Jerome K Jerome's classic "Three Men in a Boat"!

While it was originally intended to be a serious travel guide, the story devolved in the writing into an almost slapstick story of the trials and tribulations of three landlubbers who took it into their minds to take a boating holiday on the Thames River.

Even Jerome's establishment of the raison d'être for the river trip is a wonderful example of that brand of humour that is uniquely British. Three mates, each a worse hypochondriac than the other two, are discussing their respective ills, pains, aches and ailments (and this conversation, by the way, establishes the humour for the entire book that ranges somewhere in a triangle bounded by wry grins, charmed smiles and laugh-out-loud hilarity). The mutual decision is reached that taking the air and relaxing on an open boat trip under canvas on the Thames would be good for what ails everybody. Sherlock Holmes would have said, "The game is afoot!".

If the book were a television show, it might be described as a series of loosely related comedy sketches - the difficulties of learning to play a bagpipe; how to get lost on a river that goes in only one direction; how men typically behave (or misbehave) when they've had too much to drink on a camping trip; how to do as little work as possible while ensuring that your buddies are not aware of what's going on, and so on.

Sit back and enjoy! "Three Men in a Boat" has to be the most easy-reading classic you could possibly find. Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Abridged!
I feel like I should point out: The audio version here is in fact abridged. So don't pay more for this one because you think it's the unabridged reading. CSA Word only produced the abridged reading. ... Read more

Product Description
The Philosopher's Joke is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more