Three Men in a Boat

We've always had a good time on road trips with the whole family, except for the first year of each child's life (neither one of them could stand their infant car seats), and part of our tradition is to go to the library and find an audiobook we all want to listen to together. For our most recent trip, I got the audio version of Jerome K. Jerome's comedy classic Three Men in a Boat, because it's long been one of Ron's favorites while I'd never gotten very interested in it, and the kids had never heard of it before.

I chose Ian Carmichael's reading of this book because of a review at A Striped Armchair; that was the review that decided me, after reading about this book at Booklust and Things Mean A Lot. Although I don't usually remember who spurs me to read something, I always wonder what spurs a blogger revival of a particular classic, and note where the revival first comes to my attention. Also, I was looking for audiobooks for our upcoming trip.

Our enjoyment of the traveling tale was enhanced by the teenagers' insistence that we sing along to "I would walk 500 miles" (featured in a road trip episode of the tv show How I Met Your Mother) after every stop along the way.

Another thing that greatly enhanced our enjoyment is how recognizable the characters in the tale are--we grinned at the portrait of Eleanor--the hypochondriac--and then at a second portrait of her as the person afraid of two feet of water. Scarcely were we done grinning at that when we were amused by the portrait of Ron as the expert on packing who wants help with the manual labor. And then came the bit about singing comic songs, which, while not true in the details to the way Walker sings them, made us laugh in recognition anyway.

One of our very favorite parts was this true-to-dog-life portrait:
"he labored under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted."

Another good part is when the three men try to open a tin of pineapple, using a pocket knife, scissors, a sharp stone, and finally the mast of the boat. They are ultimately unsuccessful and end up throwing the oddly dented tin into the river "...and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot..."

Three Men in a Boat is the kind of book that is best read at leisure; you'll enjoy the humor so much more if you're not in any particular hurry because it's a kind of quiet, subtle humor that builds to absurdity. Take this long example:

I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow, and, when he took to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his hauls by more than twenty-five per cent.
"When I have caught forty fish," said he, "then I will tell people that I have caught fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that, because it is sinful to lie."
But the twenty-five per cent plan did not work well at all. He never was able to use it. The greatest number of fish he ever caught in one day was three, and you can't add twenty-five per cent to three--at least, not in fish.
So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third; but that, again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two; so, to simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.
He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and then he grew dissatisfied with it. Nobody believed him when he told them that he only doubled, and he, therefore, gained no credit that way whatever, while his moderation put him at a disadvantage among the other anglers. When he had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.
So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish--you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.
It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been some talk lately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity in general. Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Anglers' Association did recommend its adoption about two years ago, but some of the older members opposed it. They said they would consider the idea if the number were doubled, and each fish counted as twenty.

To make a long story short, this is a great book for a road trip; it makes short stories long and its effect is to make a long trip seem short.