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June Book Club Online


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









Written in 1889, this book has never been out of print since.
We’re still laughing.  Come on in and find out why.

 

Schedule:

June 12-? Chapters 1-5


Discussion Leader: PatH

PatH:
Welcome, everybody.  Here we go for our leisurely trip up the Thames.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  I put the 12th as starting date, but I suspect we're all pretty ready, if you want to start sooner.  Lets start by talking about chapters 1-5, which ends with them finally getting into their boat.

bellamarie:
 For those interested you can download the book or read it online at this link.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29944?msg=welcome_stranger

Chapter I, the first words are revealing......  "Three invalid. - George and Harris sufferings. - One who is the victim of one hundred and seven fatal illnesses."

For me, this told me these men are what I would consider, hypochondriacs.  The more they research, the more illnesses they suspect, or are determined, they have.  Funny stuff for me! :) :)

To help myself and others:  The three men are based on
Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) 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 Jerome often took boating trips.
The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional[2] but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog".[3] The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff.[Note 2] 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.[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_in_a_Boat

PatH:
Thanks for the link, Bellamarie.  It's nice to know what became of the men.  We'll have to watch for signs of occasional competence, and for differences between them.

There was a link to a description of the kind of boat they used, the Thames skiff, which makes it clear why they decided they could use it for a tent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_skiff

 A camping skiff has an easily erectable canvas cover and is used for outdoor recreational activity holidays, often in conjunction with other activities such as walking, swimming and fishing. The cover can be used for shelter from the sun and rain during the day and at night converts the entire craft into a floating tent. It enables the occupants to experience nature and river life up close and is featured in Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 comic novel Three Men In A Boat.[3]

BarbStAubrey:
Terrific Pat - so far the read is fun, fun, fun -

Yes Bellamarie, Hypochondriac for sure - I remember years ago before the internet reading some medical journal and convinced I had several diseases till I came too and realized I could not have more than one and then after a good night's sleep decided I was not a doctor - taught me how easy it is to persuade folks to anything - just write something that touches on what is common to many and folks hook into the thesis and then of course the solutions mentioned in the article seem the only course of action. 

Thanks for the background on the characters - looked up Carl Hentschel and he came to England as a boy of 5 from the part of Poland that was then controlled by Russia - it appears his father made a name for himself in the printing business and Carl followed working with his father - got waylaid reading and need to find out a bit about the other two names.

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