Book Eight: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain



Boo for being sick! I was on the mend last week, and then Friday rolled around and I felt even worse than before, so I spent the entire weekend feeling too awful to even pick up a book. I filled my time with endless ANTM marathons on MTV, horribly wonderful movies that I was recently reminded of, and this evil game.

I'm not sure how much I can say about this. I mean, we all know how much Mark Twain rules, how this is a classic story, how we've all read it at some point--or were supposed to have read it. In fact, that's how I came to read this. Sitting around with Chris and two other friends, we were trying to find a classic book in common that we've all read. We couldn't come up with anything. So then we tried to come up with a classic that none of us had read. And then we all decided that we should have a book club where we all finally read said book and discuss it. Not sure how we landed on Tom Sawyer, but this will be our inaugural book for our book club. Yay!

Reading it now, I know that I recognize portions of it, but I don't think I ever read it in its entirety. The whole deal around whitewashing the fence is one of my favorite stories and I remember the stuff about getting lost in the cavern and Injun Joe's treasure, but I can't recall actually having read it. Is that true for a lot of classics--you know the story but you don't think you actually read it?

Anyhow, this was super fun to read and made me realize how much I love a good narrator. One who is a recognizable character without being an actual character in the story. Mark Twain is super good at that. He's witty and sometimes sarcastic and seems to love and understand his characters. I think that's what takes a really simple story and turns it into a really great one. Also, this edition of the book from The Mark Twain Project, is really nice. It's got all of the original illustrations and some nice helpful end notes.