THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN (audiobook) by Mark Twain
Originally published in 1884 (U.K.) and 1885 (U.S.)
This audiobook version published in 2008 by Tantor Audio.
Read by William Dufris.
Duration: 9 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.
I would feel silly writing a synopsis of this book. This is the book that Ernest Hemingway said is the source of all modern American literature. It is almost universally recognized as not only "a" Great American Novel, but is oftentimes acclaimed as "THE" Great American Novel.
So, I will skip all of that discussion and just move on to a review of the audiobook presentation and what I thought of the book.
The audiobook reader was William Dufris (1958-2020), a celebrated voice over actor and the reader of dozens and dozens of audiobooks. He did a fantastic job of creating voice after voice after voice. It was quite impressive.
As for the novel, well that was less impressive than I remembered. I read this book in elementary school and almost all of the satire and character growth went right over my head. I re-read it in high school for an AP Literature class. We had to write a lengthy paper that we literally worked months on. We even took a trip to a university library to dig through the stacks to find literary criticisms and cite them. It was, by far, more complicated and longer than any other paper I wrote in my college career.
All of that work writing about the same book soured me on re-reading the book until now, 38 years later.
So, what did I think?
I was surprised at how many of the plot points I had forgotten. For example, Tom Sawyer is in this book a lot more than I remembered and he is really annoying. I know that is intentionally built in as a part of the book for thematic reasons - Huck is on his way to being a man and Tom is still a boy in many ways - but I still felt that it was tough going when Tom is in the story.
It took me quite a while to get through this audiobook. I could only go for 20 minutes or so at a time and then I had to leave it for a while. In comparison, I listened to a different audiobook today for more than 4 hours. Maybe it was because it was told in first person, I am not sure.
Despite the importance of this novel, I honestly can't rate it any more than 3 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain.
This audiobook version published in 2008 by Tantor Audio.
Read by William Dufris.
Duration: 9 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.
I would feel silly writing a synopsis of this book. This is the book that Ernest Hemingway said is the source of all modern American literature. It is almost universally recognized as not only "a" Great American Novel, but is oftentimes acclaimed as "THE" Great American Novel.
So, I will skip all of that discussion and just move on to a review of the audiobook presentation and what I thought of the book.
The audiobook reader was William Dufris (1958-2020), a celebrated voice over actor and the reader of dozens and dozens of audiobooks. He did a fantastic job of creating voice after voice after voice. It was quite impressive.
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| An original illustration by E.W. Kemble from the 1884 printing of this book |
All of that work writing about the same book soured me on re-reading the book until now, 38 years later.
So, what did I think?
I was surprised at how many of the plot points I had forgotten. For example, Tom Sawyer is in this book a lot more than I remembered and he is really annoying. I know that is intentionally built in as a part of the book for thematic reasons - Huck is on his way to being a man and Tom is still a boy in many ways - but I still felt that it was tough going when Tom is in the story.
It took me quite a while to get through this audiobook. I could only go for 20 minutes or so at a time and then I had to leave it for a while. In comparison, I listened to a different audiobook today for more than 4 hours. Maybe it was because it was told in first person, I am not sure.
Despite the importance of this novel, I honestly can't rate it any more than 3 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE ADVENTURES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain.
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