Comments on: 20 Classics #8: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

By: Angela Meyer

Angela Meyer — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:00:54 +0000

Bondles: giant fighting robots? Damn. It’s great to have multiple editions of your favourite books for that reason (lending out)!

Sunil: thanks for the recommendations! I’ll put them on the list. Glad you enjoyed my review.

By: Sunil Badami

Sunil Badami — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 01:52:09 +0000

Great review, Angela! And so prescient. Wandering through a nursing home or watching yet another Grumpy Old… on telly always makes me think of Struldbrugs – that existence without living. Such a classic – not only because it still speaks to us now (as might, say Dead Souls) but because it goes beyond merely picaresque on a childish reading to profound on an adult one. Dead Souls review next? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? Or The Guide by R K Narayan? Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

By: Bondles

Bondles — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:04:53 +0000

The trailers for the Jack Black version involve giant fighting robots. I don’t think it’s entirely faithful (and didn’t review particularly well either).

I have three editions at home. A penguin classics that I keep loaning out (and it’s miraculously the only book I’ve ever loaned that actually comes back!), a nice gilt-edged version from some time around 1910, and another one whose publisher I can’t remember, but it had a great set of appendices that explained the more contemporary political jokes. That one was pretty handy the first time I read it.

By: Angela Meyer

Angela Meyer — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:04:24 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Bondles! I borrowed the cover from the publisher’s website and that was how it came. The Jack Black film version – I haven’t seen it yet, but I think he could actually make a good Gulliver. I thought this first around the time I read the ‘pissing on the palace’ scene. But maybe it’s terrible, I don’t know.

But yes, I completely agree with you. I had no idea it’d be so enjoyable.

By: Bondles

Bondles — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:52:58 +0000

The Vintage Classics are nicely designed and certainly cheap, but there are few things that will put me off buying a book more than a NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE label.

That said, Gulliver’s Travels is a brilliant novel and a cutting satire no matter what the cover. When I first picked it up, all I knew was that Liliputians were small. I never excpected to find myself laughing out loud to a political satire from 1726!