Reading Copy Book Blog

We need your help in deciding what the Avid Reader Book Club will read during April!  Voting is simple - we have a poll open in our Community Forums where you can let us know your choice.

The choices were inspired by our recent feature, Top Ten Funniest Books According to the British.

The nominated books are:

A) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome’s comic classic Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) is unsinkable. One of the most widely read and beloved works of British fiction it has never fallen out of print since it first came out in 1889, but rather has been translated into many languages and even turned into a teleplay by Tom Stoppard.

The most ordinary circumstances turn hilarious as J., an idler who exhibits a “general disinclination to work of any kind,” and his friends journey up the Thames River. Getting into many scrapes along the way, the friends consider “assaulting a policeman” just to have “a night’s lodging in the station-house,” when they get lost, but ultimately reject the proposition, fearful that he would hit them back without locking them up. The real scene stealer, though, is Montmorency, a small fox terrier who appears to be “born with about four times as much original sin in [him] as other dogs are.”

B) My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.

C) Thank You, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse
Thank You, Jeeves is the first novel to feature the incomparable valet Jeeves and his hapless charge Bertie Wooster – and you’ve hardly started to turn the pages when he resigns over Bertie’s dedicated but somewhat untuneful playing of the banjo. In high dudgeon, Bertie disappears to the country as a guest of his chum Chuffy – only to find his peace shattered by the arrival of his ex-fiancée Pauline Stoker, her formidable father and the eminent loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop. When Chuffy falls in love with Pauline and Bertie seems to be caught in flagrante, a situation boils up which only Jeeves (whether employed or not) can simmer down…

Our poll is only open until Wednesday, March 18 so vote soon! We’ll announce the winning book shortly after that date.

Thanks for your help!