Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Paperback – 5 Feb. 2018

Managed to plough on til the end. Suspend your disbelief and just let the prose drift you along down the river. The book gives an insight into thinking and mores of the time. Characters are fanciful and Huck is clever and calculating in his dealings with them but a heavy splash of licence needs to be given to the storytelling which gets downright silly at times. An insight into white mans thinking and societal views of slavery at the time - Huck’s growing friendship for Jim cast as‘immoral’ in the eyes of the prevailing white majority

The story draws you in with the first chapter, but eye strain set in because the text was so small, perhaps even 8pt. Will have to get another with larger print. Anyone with less than 20-20 vision (and some that have!) will struggle. Shame because I'm desperate to continue after that first chapter.

I was skeptical as to how good this book was going to be, like most things that claim to be classic I'm wary of how it will turn out, not so in this case.The story is an enthralling one, you follow Huckleberry Finn from his perspective and the story is set after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the only issue I had, and it was quite minor, is that the wording is done in the dialect of Huckleberry, unless another character is talking then it uses the spelling and accent they would use, this is all explained in a foreword but can be hard at first, and be prepared as it contains liberal use of a certain word to refer to slaves, but it truly is an amazing book, I recommend it to everyone!

Ashamed to say that I had reached my 60s before actually reading the whole of Huckleberry Finn (after having read Tom Sawyer, also for the first time, and you do need to have read that first). I hadn't realised how good a story-teller Mark Twain was, and if you haven't already done so I would thoroughly recommend them to you. OK, the world is rightly more politically correct now and you have to remember the culture that Twain was writing into, but even this is something of an eye-opener on the white-black divide in Mississippi at the time, but with a good deal of humour mixed in. The story requires you to suspend reality checks to some extent; for example, Huck is totally uneducated and in his early teens, but seems to have an excellent grasp of the geography along the river; perhaps he had just hitched rides on the riverboats and kept his ears open. Unlike 'Tom Sawyer', this book is written in first-person and with phonetic spelling; you just have to read with a Deep South accent!The loss of one star is for the Kindle version, which had an irritatingly large number of words joined together - e.g. 'I tellyouifI catchyoumeddlingwithhimagain' - which you become surprisingly quick at decoding but was a bit wearing.If you've not read it - now's your chance.

This is a really entertaining read that gets better and better the further you get into it, and becomes hilarious once Tom Sawyer arrives on the scene towards the end.My understanding is that this book was removed from being taught in school on the grounds of racism, which I find utterly bizarre. It is true that throughout the book slaves are referred to using the n***** word, which is obvious distasteful. But the book is a reflection of its time and this word is primarily used by white people to illustrate their bigotry and ignorance. Throughout the book slaves are portrayed as altruistic, considerate, warm-hearted and family orientated, whilst all the fraudsters and violent drunks, including Huck's father, are white.That aside, this is a very funny book in which Huck gets into all kinds of scrapes along with Jim, a slave he is trying to free.Personally I found Tom Sawyer the most engaging character despite his late appearance. Indeed, Tom and Huck as a double act come across as a childish precursor for the likes of Morecambe and Wise with Tom and as the daft Eric and Huck as the straighter Ernie.I wonderfully entertaining and occasionally thought provoking read.

I last read this when I was about 11. I have moved on in my adventure story bibliography but it was nice to return, through these pages, to the dreamy world of youth where everything works out alright in the end.

School literature read

I totally didn't know what to expect with this book after reading tom sawyer. but this is even better! It amazed me and surprised me about the adventures. A really good insight into what life was like back then, though author says there is no moral, it seems to have a lot of modern outlook to me, pointing out the unjust treatment of slaves, trickery of con men, strange ways of town folk, dangers of small minded villagers, and all the time centring around the innocence of boyhood, young male outlook, the inner teacher a boy can follow, the kindness and judgement he can learn to develop. OK, there is a repeated word, not used today, and offensive to people of African origin beginning with 'N', I daren't quote it here. However, it was used as in the original text and is correct in its historical usage. Be aware if passing this onto a child and decide for yourself how they may take on board or understand about this aspect in the language. but otherwise a great book. came on time.