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Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Audiobook7 hours

Treasure Island

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Young Jim Hawkins lives a quiet life as the son of an innkeeper. This all changes when an ancient sailor takes up lodging at the inn. Jim is both horrified and fascinated by the captain's bloody stories. But when the old man dies without paying his bill, Jim must search the sailor's one possession, a large sea chest, for payment. In doing so, he unknowingly pockets an old map from the chest. But Jim is not the only one interested in the sea chest, and he has to flee when a group of cutthroats shows up to ransack the few possessions of the old sailor.

The family doctor recognizes the map as the key to a fortune, which commences a Caribbean treasure hunt. With the pirates only steps behind, Jim races to reach Treasure Island. Seventeen set sail, but how many will return? Complete with peg-legs, parrots, pieces-of-eight, and the original Long John Silver, this novel launched Stevenson on his long and fascinating writing career and marked the beginning of the pirate genre.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 28, 2008
ISBN9781400178476
Author

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850, changing his second name to ‘Louis’ at the age of eighteen. He has always been loved and admired by countless readers and critics for ‘the excitement, the fierce joy, the delight in strangeness, the pleasure in deep and dark adventures’ found in his classic stories and, without doubt, he created some of the most horribly unforgettable characters in literature and, above all, Mr. Edward Hyde.

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Reviews for Treasure Island

Rating: 3.981042654028436 out of 5 stars
4/5

211 ratings181 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Treasure Island was so much more my thing than I thought that it would be. There was a lot of drama, action, and suspense. It's an odd thing to read classics that were intended for a younger reading audience. I would let my children read them, but I can easily see where some parents would give pause. Some of the content in these books is controversial today...But hey! They are among the best ever written.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a book that a had to read for school and though I won’t say it was my favorite, it was really good. I really liked how the reader of the audio book had different voices for the differ t characters. It really helped me understand the story better!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The next book was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenon. A young boy, Jim Hawkins, lived quietly by the sea with his parents in an the Admiral Benbow inn. One day, a stranger moved into the Inn, dropped a few gold coins as payment for the room and he told them, “This should cover me for awhile-let me know when that payment runs out” (that is my paraphrase). The stranger wanted to stay far enough from shore but close enough to see the boats come in and out. When more payment was due, the owner would ask him to pay only to get a loud snorts and a growling stair from the stranger. He never paid anymore for the Rum or the room. The stranger was actually Billy Bones. They all sailed with Captain Flint, a feared pirate that sailed the seven seas. Billy Bones did not have much; he carried an old sea chest, a love for Rum, and some gold coins. He asked Jim to watch for a one legged man. Soon came other pirates in search of the pirate’s treasure map. The pirates gave Mr. Bones the “black spot” and he fought with another pirate. He died before they killed him. Jim’s father died too and left him and his mother alone. After the death’s, Jim searches Billy Bones and the Chest and he finds the treasure map. He trusted Dr. Livesey, the local physician and the local legal magistrate. The Squire John Trelawney was naïve. The Doc warns them not to talk much about this knowing the danger involved. They eventually get the Hispaniola a great ship and a crew. Capt’n Flint is also the name of Silver’s parrot. I’m writing too much so I’ll finish quickly. In short, the cut throat pirate, Long John Silver, was in the crew and fought and fought to get the treasure. The squire did talk too much and let the cat out of the bag.Jim serves as the cabin boy. He hid in the apple barrel and heard the pirate’s plans to find the treasure then kill all those that stand in their way. We find Ben Gunn on the island. He’d been there for years after being marooned there. He was semi nuts but had enough wherewithal to know how much to share and how much to help little Jim. Jim ran away and worked to the best of his ability hiding and fighting and taking the Hispaniola and beaches it in a hidden site. He fought Hands and sent him to Davie Jones locker. He grows up quickly and is able to make it through. I don’t want to say what happed to the treasure for fear that some of you may not have read it yet. So go read it. It’s 336 pages. I found it pretty predictable but that is common. I enjoyed this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Read it before and I'm sure I will read it again. Timeless classic with a great story, hope to read it to my son someday to show him there were pirates before Johnny Depp.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The shortest form of this book which I ever read. Classic story about pirates, treasures on an uninhabited island, adventures. The first time I read this story when I was 10-year-old, right now I back to this book to improve my English, but I prefer whole story, so I hope- I'll read them soon.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the first time I've read this book and I loved it. I had to do a lot of looking up of nautical terms to get a picture in my head of what was going on, but the story is gripping and well told. I'm also a fan of colorful dialogue and this is a great one for that. (It's also the obvious inspiration for all stereotypical pirate lingo still used today.) And I also wouldn't call this "Juvenile Fiction." Most kids today wouldn't understand a word of it...and you may lay to it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Grandly entertaining story of a a young man's acquistion of a treasure map and the ensuing treasure hunt. Not as engaging as it could have been due to the way the story is segmented, but still a great read I enjoyed very much.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Treasure Island is a classic pirate adventure story! I recently watched the 2012 TV movie "Treasure Island," and since I had not read this story as a kid, decided to read it as an adult. I can't believe I missed out on this adventure as a kid! The descriptions of the pirates and of life at sea and on the island are vivid and imaginative. The character Jim Hawkins is relatable and likeable. Definitely a fun bedtime story for kids - and adults!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A smashing adventure. Everything you could want, pirates, treasure, betrayal and tropical islands.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this a lot -- very exciting. I think the first few times I only read the beginning few chapters, though.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great adventure for all ages.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent book! Robert Louis Stevenson was skilled with words and the art of storytelling. I was impressed by so many things in this book. First and foremost the grim pirate adventure. He spared few on this harsh and bloody treasure hunt, painting a pirate's life in its truest colors. Stevenson's descriptive ability proved masterful, especially regarding his detailed writeup of ship handling. Silver's character unfolded beautifully - a sly, wise buccaneer expert in the art of manipulating people. It was interesting to watch him change sides here and there in the story, making his character the most dangerous of villians, and the one to get away. And yet, as awful as he was, the fact that he escaped hanging and even heisted some of the treasure earns its own strange sense of relief. This book was a joy to read, not to mention a true lesson in the art of writing. I loved it!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are many reasons why I liked this book “Treasure Island”. One of the reasons is this book was written about an adventure of pirates sailing the sea to find a lost treasure. The main character, Jim, narrates the story. “Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” This is an example of the songs pirates would sing when on the boat. The story engages the reader to feel they are part of the pirates’ journey looking for the treasure. “In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten [...], and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the Hispanola under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches.” Jim describes his difficult times on the boat by describing the conditions and what other men are doing when living there. Even though I like this book, I feel sometimes it is hard to follow the dialogue written is the pirate slang. Some examples would be “easy with that gun, sir or you’ll swamp the boat. All hands stand by to trim her when he aims” and “If I die like a dog, I’ll die in my dooty”. The end is very upbeat because Jim and his crew on the boat find the treasure. The first time I read this book I was in the seventh grade. I remember loving this book and wanting to read it over to recapture the journey. Treasure Island is a classic adventure tale, and also the story of one boy’s coming of age. The big idea of this story is the search for heroic role models, the satisfaction of desires, and the lack of adventure in the modern age.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A true adventure classic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an excellent book. Although originally intended for younger people, it was written in the 1800s and is thus pretty on-par with a high-school reading level today.Now, just about everyone has had to read this book at some point in school - if you haven't reread it since, I highly recommend you do so. It's the definition of a swashbuckling tale, and it really shines with a second reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A beautifully rendered and surprisingly complex and morally ambivalent adventure tale about magical (if horrid) places like Treasure Island. A great rendering of fantasy and so convincing about the heroic role that a young man can play that one might forgive the bosh about "God save the Queen," English patriotism, and true men.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Come and join us in a wonderful adventure story. Pirates, parrots, treasure maps. One of the most complicated villains in all of Victorian literature. An exotic setting, an exotic time frame. Who could ask for more?At a coastal inn, a mysterious and somewhat evil man takes up residence. Soon he’s pursued my creepy foes. What ensues is the most influential pirate story ever. Stevenson was admittedly aiming at a young male audience, but a reader would need to be unimaginative in the extreme not to get caught up in Jim Hawkins’ adventures on the high seas. Definitely recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very great classic, and no one needs me to inform them of this fact. Of the many, many pleasures this book holds in store, let me just mention the riveting chapter on Israel Hands, a character based on the real-life second in command to Blackbeard himself, whose creepy conversation, struggle with , and pursuit of Jim Hawkins ends with a deadly encounter on the mizzen-mast. Even now, many years later, I recall my own instinctive recoil and shudder as the knife found its home.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Re-reading this was an absolute pleasure from the first sentence to the last. Or to be precise, listening the audiobook with outstanding narration by Alfred Molina.Long John Silver is one of the extraordinary characters of literature, at times he almost feels on par with the creations of Shakespeare and Dickens. His extraordinary physical and psychological aptitude, his ambiguous amorality, and the way in which he controls from a position of servitude. The narrator, Jim Hawkins, and his group are more cookie cutter cardboard romantic heroes, but still interesting and compelling. And many of the characters with walk on parts, like Billy Bones and the blind pirate Pew, are fascinating.The plot moves along briskly, although the terrors are considerably greater in the first quarter--before the mutineers declare themselves--and toward the end when Jim ends up back with the pirates. In between is a decent amount of fighting and straight up adventure, which is well told and interesting but hardly something that on its own would stand the test of time.Occasionally all of the pirate talk feels a little oppressive and cliched, but then you remind yourself that this is the novel that invented all of it. But mostly the language lends a strong scent of salty reality to this classic boys adventure novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have tried to read Treasure Island numerous times. A couple times when I was younger and once as an adult. Every time I found it to be a bit boring and ended up not finishing it. This time I was determined to make it through it. I made it, and the book was okay but I think compared to modern day adventures the adventure in this book was pretty tame. I read this on my Amazon KindleI think everyone knows the basic story. A young boy and some companions form a company of sailors and take off to find buried treasure on Treasure Island. Ends up part of the company are pirates and mutiny upon landing at the Island. Struggles on Treasure Island commence between the loyal sailors and the pirates.The writing style of this novel has definitely aged with time. It isn't horrible to get through; it's pretty readable and the beginning of the story really grabbed my interest. As time goes on though the story gets bogged down with description and predictability. This isn't a story where characterization or action scenes are a strong point. It is an excellent adventure in the sense that they end up on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere; the struggles they face though are more related to dealing with the pirates than dealing with any trouble the Island throws at them.Maybe this story is just too well known, but for some reason I found it very predictable and this made getting through the lengthy descriptions even tougher. This book does do a wonderful job describing pirates and personifying their characters, but it isn't much fun.I think younger readers will find the story tedious and boring, they may also struggle with the stilted language. Older readers may appreciate the lush descriptions, but will ultimately find the action scenes lacking and the adventure to be not quite as adventurous as in modern day works.Overall an okay novel. Not as exciting and engaging as I had hoped for. Now I can say I read it and move on. I don't know that this is one I will read to my son when he gets older, I think it would bore him. When compared to other classic novels I have read this year, this was my least favorite. I found both "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "Pride and Prejudice" to be more engaging and interesting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A copy of this text is in my personal library. Actually in a junior high theatre class I'm teaching they are reading the musical version of this text. I wanted to read it to see the way it compared to the script. The reason I gave it three stars is I believe certain portions of this text contained words and phrases students would struggle comprehending. I wouldn't make it a class wide assignment, reading the book independently, but rather read it as a whole class. I would love to use this book as a read aloud and then select a scene from the play to act out. I think it would work well for readers theatre.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I endeavored to read Treasure Island as an entry point into a chronological approach to adventure stories, golden-age science fiction, and later speculative ventures. It seems to me that this classic novel has done well to satisfy in that role, and I will also add that the Oxford World's Classics introduction, explanatory notes, and other supplements were useful, if unessential.That said, I am afraid there is little to recommend Treasure Island to the modern reader. The story itself has been surpassed many times over, and the archaic maritime language is a double-edged sword of charm and impediment; the writing is fun and quotable for the same reasons that often render it a right chore to comprehend. If one's sole purpose in selecting Stevenson's tale of the stalwart Hispaniola crew's quest for buried booty amid the treachery of Long John Silver upon Skeleton Island is merely to be entertained by a hardy lads' romp, it must be said that many superior (and less frustrating) options have become available since it was published in 1883. You and I are simply too removed from this work by time to enjoy it properly.However, I am ultimately glad that I read Treasure Island. Its historical value is clear both as a genre pioneer and as the origin for so many well-known pirate tropes, and, although it can be difficult in the telling, to be sure, the tale is not an unpleasant one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write essays on whether or not they deserve the labelEssay #32: Treasure Island (1883), by Robert Louis StevensonThe story in a nutshell:Inspired by a doodle from his step-son and originally written as a rainy-day family diversion, the slim 1883 children's book Treasure Island (originally published serially in 1881 and '82) was not only the first novel of sickly genre author Robert Louis Stevenson's short career, but eventually one of his most famous. Essentially the tale of young adventurer Jim Hawkins, the story opens with him as a dutiful mama's boy off the southwest coast of England, helping to run a family inn that sees little action because of being located much more inland than most of the other local sailor-oriented hotels. Ah, but this is exactly what brings the drunken, scary Billy Bones there, where it becomes quickly apparent that he is on the run and in semi-hiding from a whole crew of mysterious, nefarious characters; and when they finally show up after Bones' alcoholism-related death, the family realizes that they are in fact pirates, on the hunt for a treasure map that Bones stole from a recent mutinous voyage that went horribly, horribly wrong. This then convinces a group of local Victorian gentlemen and family friends to go after the treasure themselves, eventually buying a boat and hiring a local crew to take them to this far-off tropical island; but little do they realize that the sailors they've hired are none other than the surviving pirates of the former mutiny, led by the charismatic yet psychopathic one-legged "ship's cook" Long John Silver, who plan on turning on the ship's owners once actually reaching the island and retrieving the treasure they were forced to leave behind during their last voyage. The rest of the book, then, is essentially an adventure tale, full of all kinds of legitimate surprises that I won't spoil here; let's just say that a lot of swashbuckling takes place, that many details regarding ship-sailing are faithfully recorded, and that the day is eventually saved by our fast-thinking teenage hero Jim, no surprise at all for a book designed specifically to amuse fellow teenage boys.The argument for it being a classic:Well, to begin with, it's arguably the most famous pirate tale ever written, and in fact established for the first time many of the stereotypes now known within the genre, including one-legged buccaneers, treasure maps with a big 'X' on them, shoulder-sitting parrots squawking "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!," and even the very idea of British pirates being associated with exotic tropical islands in the Caribbean, an association now so strong that it's almost impossible to separate the two; and of course it's also the novel that created the unforgettable Long John Silver, now a thoroughly ingrained part of our Western culture at large. Add to this that it's simply an incredibly thrilling tale (rumor has it that England's Prime Minister at the time stayed up until two in the morning to finish his first reading of it), that it still holds up surprisingly well even 126 years later, and that it's also of immense importance to fans of Stevenson, a prolific author whose genius is just now starting to be widely recognized, after being dismissed by the literary community for almost a century as a frivolous "kiddie writer;" and now add to all this that Treasure Island is a surprisingly sophisticated examination of the era's ethics and moral code as well, taking an unblinking look at the "Victorian Ideal" as manifested in different ways among the stuffy gentlemen "heroes" (unable to improvise in changing circumstances, much to their detriment), the anarchic pirate villains (who almost kill themselves off just on their own, through drunkenness, ignorance and jealousy), and the ruthless yet principled Silver who straddles both these extremes.The argument against:A weak one at best; like many of the genre prototypes of the late Victorian Age, one could argue that this is simply too flippant a tale to be considered a classic. But we already established a long time ago here at the CCLaP 100 that genre stories are indeed eligible for "classic" status in this series, making this argument inapplicable in our case.My verdict:Holy crap! What an incredible book! And what a refreshing change in this case to not have to add my usual caveat to statements like these regarding late Victorian genre experiments: "...you know, for a century-old children's story that's kind of outdated and that you need to take with a grain of salt." Because the fact is that Treasure Island to this day still reads as fresh and exciting as the day it came out, which is a real testament to the writing skills of Robert Louis Stevenson (who I was already a big fan of before this essay series even started, because of his superbly creepy and also surprisingly relevant Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); what a shame that this illness-plagued author ended up dying at the age of 44 in the prime of his career, instead of surviving to pen the truly mindblowing mature works I'm convinced that he had been capable of. And it's exactly for the reasons that his fans bring up that this book remains such an amazing one, and how it is that it can still easily be read for pleasure instead of having to force one's way through for historical purposes; because it is indeed not only a thrilling adventure tale, not only written in a style that largely rejects the purplish finery of the Victorian Age in which it was created, but is also a deceptively complex look at the entire nature of "gentlemanness" that was so prevalent at the time, gently poking holes in the entire notion of what it means to be a Refined Citizen of the Empire, even while acknowledging that a complete disavowal of these gentlemanly standards is even worse. There's a very good reason that Long John Silver has endured so strongly in our collective imagination over the last century, when so many other fictional pirates have fallen by the wayside, because he turns out to be a surprisingly complicated character worth coming back to again and again, a vicious killer but with a consistent internal moral code worth perversely admiring; it's but one of many reasons that I confidently label this book a undeniable classic today, and highly recommend it to anyone on the search for the best of 19th-century literature.Is it a classic? Absolutely
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I know this is a classic and a must read for all children, but I'd never read it until now. The book stars Jim Hawkins, son of an inn keeper, who acquires a treasure map and sets out to find his fortune. Along the way he teams up with various characters, including Dr Livesey, Long John Silver and Ben Gunn. There are lots of twists and turns to keep you guessing what will happen next. Of course the ending is predictable (they get the treasure) but it's what happens along the way that makes this a great children's adventure. In my book the level of violence makes it unsuitable for reading to younger children, best wait until they are old enough to read it themselves.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I must have read this book as a child because I distinctly remember receiving it at xmas when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I did not recall much else about the book though so am very glad to have re-read this classic coming-of-age adventure story. And it is a rollicking good adventure yarn; action-packed from start to finish and populated with well-drawn characters, the story is just as fresh and thrilling today as when it was first released in the 1880's.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed reading through this. It's a great adventure tale, and it has been deemed a classic for good reason.

    A lot of my reading was colored by the number of times I've seen various film adaptations of the story, and I must say I was impressed that no film version I have ever seen accurately represents the entire story. One will get these things right, another will get those things right, and all of them will miss out on this tidbit, or that one. But I liked the book a great deal.

    It doesn't get five stars for... some reason or another. I don't quite remember. My brain is a little frazzled right now, for personal reasons; perhaps I will amend this review later if I think of more details.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Pure classic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I finished reading this for the first time recently; I never was interested in it as a child, even though I always had a copy in my collection, and it wasn't until as a uni student being introduced to the other writings of Stevenson that I became enchanted with his narrative styles, his wonderful plots and the way in which he can draw you into a different world full of the most unique characters.Treasure Island proved no different, it was utterly absorbing from beginning to end, except for maybe where Dr Livesley took over from Jim Hawkins. I thought maybe the end was a bit abrupt as well, but the body of the writing was some very fine children's writing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Treasure Island is perhaps THE classic pirate's tale. Robert Louis Stevenson, the author, created a rich story of adventure and treachery on the high seas all seen through the eyes of a boy named Jim Hawkins. Jim starts off as the son of tavern owners in a humble little port village. When an old seaman stays at the tavern, trouble soon follows him in the form of a pirate crew seeking revenge. I will not give away any more specific plot points, but events move forward to a great treasure hunt, treachery, and a surprisingly engaging story for adults as well as children.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The classic tale receives illustrations it deserves! Outstanding story of mystery, intrigue, deception and treasure of course. The characters are fun: Jim Hawkins the boy, appears to be out of his league yet manages to overcome all obstacles. Long John Silver is a study in opportunism and deception.It's an excellent tale that should be read and re-read!