53. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
reader: Elijah Wood
OPD: 1884
format: 10:10 audible audiobook
acquired: free on audible listened: Aug 12-22
rating: 4
genre/style: classic fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: pre-Civil War Mississippi River from Missouri down
about the author: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 –1910) was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hanibal, Missouri

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phew. I used an audio version read, wonderfully, by Elijah Wood. I don't know how people tolerate Twain. He was fun, but he drew things out far far beyond a normal person's tolerance. It just goes on too long. And I finished the audio exhausted. But this had a wonderful opening, and many terrific sections going down the river. And, as I was reading in prep to read [James] by Percival Everett, I spent the entire book thinking about Jim, and his perspective, and everything he must have thought behind what he actually says. There is a lot of mystery left to Jim, and his outward tolerance can be seen as a mask.

Anyway, good experience, but far too many long drawn-out scenes.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/362165#8605873 ( )

I guess Mark Twain just isn't for me. A shame, because even though I wasn't too keen on Tom Sawyer, I had high hopes for this one, as everyone says it's so much better.

Unfortunately I just found it somewhat irritating throughout.

I'm sure it's not the book, as so many people love it. It just doesn't suit me. ( )

The last time I read this book was in high school, sophomore year, as part of the English curriculum. I didn't remember not liking it so I thought, shoot, I'll read it again. And what fun it is! I'm ashamed to say I haven't read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (though I know enough about it; Mark Twain is so ingrained in our culture), though I certainly will.

Twain, through Huck, paints the most blatantly honest view of people, from his abusive, greedy Pap to the sad, deceased Emmeline Grangerford. He's a sweet boy, and it's such fun to go down the Mississippi on his raft with himself and Jim.

Like anything of this era, it's incredibly important to remember that Huck Finn is a product of his times and while the view of the world has changed, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a notorious banned book, we should not hide literature away in a cupboard because of the world which produced it. I have similar feelings to this novel as I do Gone With the Wind, because of its racist sentiments, but one absolutely cannot let this ruin the book, as when it was written, this would have been even controversially abolitionist. Just food for thought.

To sum up, I just want to add that Tom and Jim's discourse about the necessities of prisonerhood and the need to keep a pet rattlesnake and so forth had me all but laughing out loud in the middle of my quiet office as I listened to the audiobook. That, and Elijah Wood does a recording through Audible that is absolutely sublime. ( )