Sunday, May 15, 2016

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain (Spoilers?)

Another classic book that I knew next to nothing about before reading it. Thanks to the title, I knew it had a sort of time-travel element to it, but that was it. I expected it to be about the titular Yankee adapting to sixth century life, and instead Twain inverts that, having him establish all sorts of late 19th century things like electricity, schools, the telegraph, and etc. This is puzzling but also kind of amusing.

I can honestly say that I didn't expect the story to be such a satire - and a very pointed satire at times. Twain really roasts some of his subjects, and it is glorious as far as I'm concerned - they all deserve it. I especially liked how he satirized the gullibility of the people in general, and how they took a speaker's word for anything without ever examining a statement critically - far too many people today are this way in my opinion, and frankly it's scary. So I guess nothing much has changed, ha ha.

All in all this was classic Twain at his most entertaining and his most cranky. Recommended.

In other news, I am claiming this book for the brown category of the Color-Coded Reading Challenge, since the cover is tan and brown, as shown below.

I'm tan and brown - I'm a twofer for this challenge! 

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