The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

This book was actually a re-read for me I read it back when I was in high school and I just loved the since of adventure just very well written book and can't wait to read the book to my children even my daughter who is currently 9 had started it at some point. But fair warning it takes place during a time of slavery but it isn't graphic just about a boy who fakes his death runs away and is joined by a run away slave. Clean enough for me to allow my 9 yr old daughter to read it. But if she had any questions I would answer them.

Was exactly as described! Beautiful book.

I bought this particular edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' for the few but wonderful illustrations done by Scott McKowen. I already owned a gallery-sized digital print of the cover art and I wanted to document where it came from. I also purchased a 'critical edition' of the work with scholarly annotations by Michael Patrick Hearn. Both editions have their strong points: the Sterling Classic edition is a convenient bedside format and the text, without scholarly annotations, reads easily--like any 'regular' book. The Norton critical edition is sufficiently larger in size to be harder to hold. Its purpose is to inform the reader about Mark Twain, the influences on his writing and his aims in writing 'Huckleberry Finn.' There are columns of text along side of columns of notes on every page.Readers of this review are going to ask: "who is HE to review perhaps the greatest work of fiction in American literature?" I have a literary education and am both a reader and a writer. That helps. I first read 'Huckleberry Finn' as a youth and I marveled at the unfamiliar world of the Mississippi River valley and the unfamiliar time in the history of our country. I read the work purely for its adventure. There is plenty of that. Even today, when readers are more sensitive to the struggle for Civil Rights for all Americans...and when regional dialects are possibly of little interest, the book holds up well as an adventure and as a coming of age story. Most teens will sympathize with Huck's desire for freedom from adult supervision. This has its parallel in Jim's desire for freedom from slavery as an adult. Mark Twain is also spinning a 'yarn' about a young nation and about a frontier full of people who are very resistant to 'gentrification' along 'Eastern' or European lines of civilization and manners.The professional literary critics who have applied their talents to this book feel that Twain not only spun a yarn but that he spun the book out with a padded and unsatisfying third quarter where Tom Sawyer is brought back into the story to little good purpose. Ever mindful of his commercial market, Twain tried everything he knew to attract readers. He was famed as a humorist but he didn't hesitate to descend into burlesque where he thought that would boost sales. American authors also relied on salesmen to solicit subscriptions to works, releasing sections of the book in sequence over time at attractive prices. Longer works meant a higher overall price for a complete work. It appears that Commerce trumped Art in the final parts of 'Huckleberry Finn.'Readers with an advanced interest in American literature will likely relish the careful report of local color championed by Twain and Ambrose Bierce (et al.) and 'Huckleberry Finn' is still widely admired for its nuanced treatment of local dialects and usage in the development of American English. Those features are present on the page of both editions but are only explained for the uninitiated in the Norton critical text edition.

This satirical novel is the sequel to 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and is one of the first novels to be written in the vernacular with local color. How about this from Jim ,the slave as an example: " I tuck out en shin down de hill, en `spec to steal a skift `long de sho' som'ers `bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go `way. Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time". Is that great, or what? The language does slow the reader down, but emits all the local color of the mid 1850s! This is the story of Huck Finn and his adventures down the Mississippi River on a raft trying to escape his drunken father. I never saw so many words go red on Google as I did writing this review of Twain's novel. I loved this book because Twain made me feel like I was in the milieu of the South living on a Mississippian river raft. I could actually feel the heat of the day! Absolutely a great job of recreating the atmosphere of the south before things got chaotic and uncontrolable. In another words, this novel's setting is just before the North/South conflict. This is the second novel that I've read recently pertaining to this time period in the South and quite frankly I'm stunned by the Southerner's cavalier attitude towards the suffering of their slaves. Yet Mark Twain made this novel seem like it had a jocular theme, I guess that's all part of his satirical style of writing. This version of the novel has 148 illustrations and is a reproduction of the original 1885 masterpiece now published by Piccadilly Books, LTD.Does the proverb "boys will be boys" mean: It is hard, often fruitless, to attempt to curb the natural playfulness and tendency to mischief of most growing boys, or does it mean Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? I think the latter. This novel is the continuing saga of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, two 13-14 year old rascals. This story opens with Huck now living with the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. Huck has a considerable amount of money in trust with Judge Thatcher, garnered from Injun Joe in the previous Tom Sawyer book. Anyway, Huck's drunken Pap wants the money and somehow gets control of Huck's guardianship and leaves with Huck to a cabin on the banks of the Mississippi River. There Huck is constantly abused, so he fakes his death and heads down river in a canoe. He gets to Jackson's Island ( between Missouri and Illinois ) and discovers that Miss Watson's slave, Jim is there on the run from Miss Watson because he found out that she was going to sell him for $800! Huck learns that the folks back home think either Jim, or Pap killed him. They set off on a raft for incredible adventures. Jim wants his freedom and Huck wants to get away from Pap.On Huck's journeys he runs into many difficult circumstances and harrowing escapes. First on a shore village where he meets the Granderfords, but they have a feud in progress with the Shepherdsons resulting in a big shootout as Huck egresses to the river again. Huck, now back with Jim, meets two incredible grifters on the run from a town's angry crowd. They hitch a ride with Huck and Jim on the raft and this is where the fun starts. The scams they pull off with Huck are hilarious! One of these swindlers says he is the rightful Duke of Bridgewater and the other claims to be the exiled and rightful King of France. I will not tell you anything else, but the plot thickens and the real fun reading starts at this point in the novel ( chapter XIX, page 100 ).According to an article from Wikipedia: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism". The problem is as I read the novel, I was not convinced one way or the other whether Twain was being real, or satirical. I guess it's too late to ask him. Wikipedia also states: "To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave him, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes - which anyone would agree was the right thing to do - he then immediately encounters Jim "illegally" doing the same thing". Later in Twain's career he became the harbinger of satirical comedy, but was he the future Will Rogers, or Don Rickles? Regardless of my confusion, I have to recommend this novel as it is considered one of the Great American Novels.

This is one of those stories that you can revisit a hundred times and it never fails to delight! Page turner!

Good book.

It was really good. However, there was one chapter missing from the recording.

I am using this book to learn to read again as I had a brain stroke on my left side

It’s easy to see why this is a world classic! Tom stands for the madness and joy of childhood, with Huckleberry his guileless sidekick. It’s a very good read.

Lu avec de jeunes lecteurs qui ont découvert avec délectation que ces enfants du 19e étaient comme eux, au fond. Un bel aperçu à partager avec des enfants d’aujourd’hui, d’une enfance au fond bien plus libre et insouciante que celle d’aujourd’hui, sans écrans qui coupent du réel… et puis évidement la prose perspicace et à l’humour gentiment moqueur de Twain.

Four major protagonists are sailing through the Mississippi river on a great journey: Finn, the storyteller and adventurous boy; Jim, the runaway slave; the Mississippi itself and lastly the variety of dialects or colloquialisms spoken in the course of the narrative. Through the peculiar voices, Twain imprints an identity to set their characters.Despite that the Huckleberry’s odyssey could seem to be a complementary history from Mark Twain’s book “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, there is no need to read it to understand the present narrative. The first book edition was delivered in 1884. The narrative is told by Finn. Its original place is Saint Petersburg, a southern town in the United States. It sets up the division between the pro-slavery south and pro-abolitionist north. Writing for juvenile readers, full of unexpected events, Mark Twain’s book give us a powerful anti-racist manifesto. Depictured with humor, irony and a keen sensibility for criticizing human values, it goes beyond this point.The circumstances draw a friendly tie between Finn and Jim, built not by race or social class, but through their personal actions. Of course, not everything is perfect, and Huckleberry, ever a rule breaker, is faced with problems of conscience arising from his concepts. This is particularly expressed when Jim tells Finn that he's going to save money to buy his wife and son who live as slaves. If the owner won’t sell, Jim will get an Abolitionist to go and steal them. Finn panics: How can anyone steal slaves from a master even though they are his whole family?” In parallel, Twain goes on to show us the portrayal of the American society in that time. Although the author questions the time’s moral values, drops emerge in the present scenario. Riding the current of the river, the old American racial postulates attain the vulnerability of the modern black Americans.At the end, Finn concluded that Freedom is above the Law.Although I had struggled to understand the dialects, this work delighted me a lot. I embarked with Mark Twain to uncover on the Mississippi river a priceless adventure.

Un clásico

Everybody knows it: this is one of the best novels ever written. Funny, moving, passionate adventure novel, with characters so human and well outlined that it gives the impression that one knows them personally.