The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

This is one of those books that shows how disconnected I am from the world. There is nothing here for me, I couldn't stand over and hour of this.

Huckleberry Finn is a kid. He has friends. He plays with them. He has an abusive redneck father that explores and beats him. He rather be with him then go to school. That's all it took for me to stop reading this.

Read 1:08/11:14 10%

3.5 stars. I'm pretty divided about this book. Some parts I really loved others I hated.

I disliked how some parts felt dragged out (ex. The king and duke) and the last couple chapters with Tom were painful to get through (the little sh*t). I just had to stop reading it a couple times because of it. While there are other negatives there's also a lot of positives.
I enjoyed the classic adventures and not knowing what will happen to Huck and Jim whenever they'd meet people on land. And as interesting the adventures are, this book gives Huck the choice of what being “civilized” means. His dad: being a drunk, violent and rascist or the widows way: wear uncomfortable clothes, educated and also rascist. The book is trying to convey to the reader that for all their claims to being civilized, they are the ones lacking in morals and education. And Huck thinking he'd be damned for making the choice choses his own path and saying one of my favourite lines ever.
...It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I'll go to Hell'–and tore it up.
This book had some shining moments, but, that end though.
For now it's 3.5 stars but I might change it in the future, I don't know. This book will be on my mind for a while.

I did end up enjoying it some, but I found it hard to get into, and in general I think it's just a case of ‘this story isn't for me'. Huck Finn is a little too reckless and adventurous for me to not constantly feel like he's in danger. And Tom Sawyer is just.... a bad influence? Like that boy is just too much. Wayyyyyyy too much. I couldn't deal with him. 
Whenever The King and The Duke were around I was worried for Huck Finn's safety. By the time Huck Finn reaches Aunt Sally he has become more tolerable, and when Tom Sawyer shows up, Tom is clearly the worse of the two, which automatically puts Huck Finn in a better light. 
I don't know, there were some parts to enjoy, but for the most part it just wasn't for me.

“You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”

And that's the start of our introduction to one of life's most charming main characters, Huck Finn. Huck fakes his own death to escape his abusive dad, and goes through a series of wonderful adventures, meeting oodles of scary characters along the way.

I listened to the well done audiobook version read by Elijah "Frodo" Woods and know this contributed to my engagment in the story. I am extremely intrested in reading "James" as it seems to be on every "Best of 2024" list I've seen. And since it builds directly off "Huck," I thought it was time to finally read this famous (infamous?) novel which I skimmed when assigned it in high school decades ago. Although Woods did the voices well, I was not impressed with the story. It's a good "road" (river) tale with elements of the "buddy" genre, yet there's not much focus to the plot. It seems more like a series of vignettes rather than a plot with suspenseful development. There's some humor, but it gets lost in storylines which take much too long to unfold. And then there's the "n-word" issue. Dang - Twain/Huck uses it A LOT - likely at least 150 or 200 times. While it was so hard to hear to the point of numbness, it was a reminder of how this word was used as a categorical name of an entire group of human beings. I hope the value of "James" makes the difficulty of enduring "Huck" first worth the effort.

My dad read this book to me as bedtime stories when I was a kid, and I've read it a couple of times since, but not for many years. I re-read it this week in preparation for reading Percival Everett's James. On one hand I was in familiar and beloved territory, especially in scenes where Huck is lying his head off to some adult and in danger of getting caught. On the other hand, the incessant use of the "N" word is shocking, and it's more shocking to me that I don't remember it being incessant from previous readings.

This time around I also recognize more clearly how subversive this book is on the subject of race and slavery, in Huck's worry about how helping a runaway slave is "wrong" according to the social rules he's been raised to believe, and how there must be something wrong with him for not being able to turn Jim in, and in so many other subtle and not so subtle details of the story.

If you can set aside the horrifying callousness towards black enslaved people, the grim blood feud that kills off an entire family, and the grifters out to rob as many people as they can, Huck Finn's adventures are also hilarious and beautiful in parts. But the hilarity is also mixed up with callousness. I agreed with Jim that they'd had enough of kings and dukes, but honestly, I'd had enough of Tom Sawyer's insistence on prolonging Jim's imprisonment so that he could mimic the Count of Monte Cristo or other romantic escapes from prison.

This is an important piece of Americana, a great satire on American morals and conscience during slavery, and a classic adventure tale all in one, and it's ripe for a retelling from James's side. I'm looking forward to seeing what Percival Everett does with it.

Read this in preparation for reading James by Percival Everett. My only previous brush with Twain was when I was assigned to read Tom Sawyer in middle school. I was so bored by it, I opted to watch the movie instead and never touched another Twain, though I was told Huck Finn is the better book. Reading it as an adult, I have more of an appreciation for Twain's wit and humor. I also think 11-year-old me was valid in her complaints that all the books we were assigned to read were “boy” books.