#42 in Humour
Three Men in a Boat
- 178
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
- Film 1979 +4
- On screen
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Our view
The gentle comedy of “Three Men in a Boat” has stayed fresh since 1889: a fortnight on the Thames with a narrator who is easy to grow fond of. Some readers find the first fifty pages slow going, and some feel the wandering nearly costs the book its thread or smile at it without laughing aloud. Jerome set out to write a travel guide, and the jokes and digressions took over.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous novel by English writer Jerome K. Jerome describing a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction from the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers: the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 5 times — from 1920 to 1979.
- FilmThree Men in a BoatIMDb
- FilmThree Men in a BoatIMDb
- FilmThree Men in a BoatIMDb
- FilmThree Men in a BoatIMDb
- TV filmThree Men in a BoatIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 282 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 66% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Humour average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.1 | 35 | 12% |
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 247 | 88% |
Frequently asked
How long is Three Men in a Boat?
It has 178 pages — shorter than 86% of the ranked books in Humour.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Humour — with scores between 7.6 and 8.0, closest to this book.
