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    Three Men on the Bummel
    Three Men on the Bummel
    Three Men on the Bummel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Three Men on the Bummel

    Written by Jerome K. Jerome

    Narrated by David Case

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Three Men on the Bummel is the story of a Victorian bicycle trip gone wrong-then wrong and wrong again! A trio of British gentlemen attempt a cycling expedition in Germany's Black Forest. Confusion about the differences in language and culture get them into continual trouble, whether it's boarding a train, buying a present for an aunt, or simply trying to get safely from one place to another. Will they ever get back to their own lives-and will they really want to? Reprising the characters from Jerome's hugely popular Three Men in a Boat, this gently humorous book will delight anyone who has ever had an unpredictable vacation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 16, 2009
    ISBN9781400181230
    Author

    Jerome K. Jerome

    Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in 1859 and was brought up in London. He started work as a railway clerk at fourteen, and later was employed as a schoolmaster, actor and journalist. He published two volumes of comic essays and in 1889 Three Men in a Boat. This was an instant success. His new-found wealth enabled him to become one of the founders of The Idler, a humorous magazine which published pieces by W W Jacobs, Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others. In 1900 he wrote a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, which follows the adventures of the three protagonists on a walking tour through Germany. Jerome married in 1888 and had a daughter. He served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front during the First World War and died in 1927.

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    Reviews for Three Men on the Bummel

    3.5/5

    13 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I didn't find this sequel nearly as funny as the first book ("Three Men on a Boat") but I suspect part of that is that narrator David Case (aka Frederick Davidson) wasn't as good as Stephen Crossley (whose narration I listened to in the first book). Also my attention has been poor due to current events here in the U.S. so that probably played a role.
    • 3/5
      Not as good as it's more famous companion but still lots of fun.
    • 4/5
      Half of my enjoyment came from the reading by Peter Yearsley available in the public domain over at Librivox, who somehow never lets the interest flag, even when the author is expounding on the the most routine of subjects. The best parts feature the comic byplay between the three companions but this is only about half of the text, which is given over to probing observations of German national characteristics circa 1900. Now and then a modern reader may receive an odd ghostly feeling when something in the story happens to remind one of the bloody cataclysm between the British and German nations fifteen years later, but that is inadvertent. It is a time of peace and serenity at the turn of the century with signs of the modern world starting to displace social customs which have been in place for hundreds of years, fertile ground for the work of a sharp humorist.
    • 4/5
      Short, hilarious read. You won't learn anything or change your world views, but it's well written and highly entertaining.
    • 4/5
      Unjustly considered an inferior follow-up to "Three Men in a Boat". Just as delightful, with a tinge of retrospective darkness in its evaluation of the German character just as its respect for militarism and obedience was about to open a half century of catastrophe. If only the consequences had played out as innocently as Jerome expected! That aside, a quick and enjoyable read for bicyclists, travelers, and lovers of dry wit. The Librivox reader does a fine job, for anyone looking for a listen.
    • 4/5
      Oh my god, I had to stop laughing to be able to breathe! Wonderful humour!
    • 3/5
      Jerome K Jerome had the misfortune to write one of the most famous-for-being-funny books in the English language, as a result of which no-one (including me...) seems to be much interested in the rest of his long and quite successful career as journalist, essayist, playwright, novelist and campaigner for copyright reform. This, his third travel book, which reunites George, Harris and J. from Three men in a boat on a trip to Germany, is one of the few that does still get read from time to time. Three men in a boat was largely fiction — Jerome worked characters based on his friends "George" (George Wingrave, who had been his flatmate when he was starting out as a journalist) and "Harris" (the photographer Carl Hentschel) into the story of a boating trip he actually made with his wife — but the Bummel seems to have been based on a real holiday the three men took together. It's billed as a cycling holiday, and the book contains a couple of very famous funny cycling anecdotes (the one about the unfortunate tandem rider who failed to notice that he had left his wife behind somewhere along the way, and the one about the officious friend who insists on "overhauling" your bike for you). But in fact cycling in the Schwarzwald and the Vosges only occupies a few days of the holiday, the rest of the time they are travelling around Germany and Austria-Hungary by train with their bikes in the luggage van. Jerome has learnt from the earlier book that the "purple passages" describing landscape were the parts readers enjoyed least, so he keeps the scenery to a minimum here (but he does include a comic anecdote to underline the point that one forest is much like another as far as the reader's imagination is concerned). What we get most of are stories about the process of travelling in a foreign country (trains, hotels, linguistic difficulties, etc.) and stories about the peculiarities of the Germans (and Czechs and Alsatians) as seen by an English traveller. A recurrent theme is the Germans' strange need to have every aspect of civil life covered by detailed rules and official notices, as opposed to the English habit of leaving things to common-sense. It made me wonder what Jerome would think of the hyper-regulated police-state that is 21st century Britain...What is striking is that Jerome's knowledge of German life clearly isn't just the superficial observation of a short-term holiday visitor it's presented as. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of the language and he knows about things that a tourist wouldn't think to look at (for instance, he refers to the German criminal law code several times). As he never seems to have lived or studied in Germany, I wondered if some of this is down to Hentschel, who came from a (presumably German-speaking) family that moved from Łódź to London when he was a small boy. Is it still funny? Well, yes, mostly, although you do have to tune yourself to the slow progress towards the punchline that characterises Jerome's anecdotes, which can be quite painful if you already know where they are heading. And you have to put out of your mind how the sort of harmless jokes Jerome is making about "the Germans" got twisted into savage propaganda later in the century, and how elements of that propaganda, long after it was needed, are still distorting the minds of people who write for and read British tabloid newspapers.And sometimes it is simply too subtle for a hurried modern reader — for instance, there's a running joke about George's aunt, whom he writes to every day and buys presents for. Only on this (third or fourth) reading did the penny drop that we're supposed to realise that she isn't an aunt at all, and that J and Harris are tactfully pretending that they don't know that...
    • 3/5
      I read that when Jerome K. Jerome wrote Three Men In A Boat, his editor took out all the serious parts and we were left with a tale of hilarity. I don't think Three Men On The Bummel was edited much.It's pretty boring, honestly. There are some parts that are really funny, and the very last paragraph is pretty cool, but that's all.
    • 4/5
      Immensely witty - a natural successor to "Three Men In a Boat". Funny throughout, there are some scenes (such as the visit to a London boot shop using a German- English phrase book) that are now comdey classics
    • 3/5
      Three Men on the Bummel is quite amusing, up until the part where they actually go on the trip, whereupon it becomes rather unremarkable. Three Men on a Boat (the first book) is much better at sustaining the humour throughout.
    • 4/5
      I read this while on holiday in the Black Forest, the very destination of the novel. I was desperately hoping some of the destinations we visited would be mentioned, as it would have been fascinating to 'see' them as they were a hundred years ago. Unfortunately I was disappointed on this score.Otherwise, the humour I remembered from Three Men in a Boat was still there - the early account of the bicycle being dismantled, and the long story about the boat, were excellent, as was the section about the German phrasebook. I'm laughing just thinking about it! Unfortunately, beyond these sections the humour was spread a little thinner, and towards the end the author gets bogged down in descriptions of German fighting traditions and the book became rather like the punishing slog uphill that faces you after the exhilerating freewheeling bike journey down one of those Black Forest mountains.
    • 3/5
      "A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started…... But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand…… We have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over."

      This closing passage sums up my precise sentiments for this book. The book primarily deals with distinctive and entertaining experiences of three friends (Jerome, Harris and George), while on a cycling tour throughout Germany. Often when you read a sequel after the parent book, one cannot help but to evaluate the two. Overlooking my resistance to do so, I have to disclose that this book fails to capture the enchantment and exuberance of ‘Three Men in a Boat’. Nevertheless, it should not be dismissed easily!

      While the opening sections are a bit loose and floppy; in time the narrative does gathers the lost spark with the onset of the bicycle tour. And, then it’s a vortex of humor and satire that swoops the reader into the perils of touring a foreign land. The comical vignettes slowly fabricate into a satirical euphoria that Jerome is known to produce. Several comical confrontations between George and Jerome bring back the lost smile and cheer. One such episode needs a mention:-

      George:-"Why, in Germany, is it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree? Why do they not fix it to the front door as we do? I should hate having to climb up a tree to get my letters. Besides, it is not fair to the postman. In addition to being most exhausting, the delivery of letters must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be positively dangerous work."
      (Jerome): "I followed his gaze out of window.' I said,
      Jerome:-"Those are not letter-boxes, they are birds' nests. You must understand this nation. The German loves birds, but he likes tidy birds."

      The subtle glee shown in the exploration of a new land by three outsiders and numerous other similar anecdotes keeps you glued and entertained till the end.

      ‘Three Men on a Bummel’ is firmly not an afterthought of ‘Three Men in a Boat’. It is an entirely new adventure pertaining to exploring a fresh and astonishing land. Hence it should be viewed in singular light to make the reading plausible.