Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jerome K. Jerome wrote books the same way Victor Borge played the piano. Both could show great beauty and depth when they wanted to, but they usually preferred just to make us laugh.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It recounts a two-week-long boat trip up the Thames River by three friends, none of whom belongs in the outdoors. Their ineptness with handling boats (and with cooking, and with setting up a tent, and with almost everything else they try to do), their (lack of a) work ethic, their spats with each other, and their frequent misadventures in the towns they pass through are hilarious. Along the way, we get bits of British history, descriptions of quaint riverside towns, anecdotes of the odd exploits of their fox terrier, occasional meditations on what it means to be human, and lots of other tidbits that meander like the river itself. All in all, this is a great book. I hope to get to it again.

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