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This thread is to discuss The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the second book in the Adventures of Tom and Huck series by Mark Twain.

Pages: 327 pages

Length: 1 month (September)

Participants: Beth, Lina

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

This is one of my current reads. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it right now, so I'll pop back in and share some thoughts soon.

I hope to be able to join you girls on this one. But have to work on other buddy read first. We'll see.

Rebecca wrote: "This is one of my current reads. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it right now, so I'll pop back in and share some thoughts soon."

Great!

I'll start this one fairly early in Sep as I already own the book.

This is so exciting! I haven’t read Huck Finn since college but I’ve been wanting to reread it before diving into James. Haven’t been a part of a buddy read before but I’m pumped to join :)

I have two more books to finish but then I'll start! I will also be reading James after, Josh! (but probably in October)

lways wanted to read this so I will join yall this month

Hey, howdy, hey, everyone!

Starting today! I'm going to do both audio book (narrator: Norman Dietz) and digital.

I've never read Huck Finn (at least, not that I remember) but did read Tom Sawyer. I'm looking forward to reading this in prep to read James next month.

Obviously the language is going to be challenging (meaning the use of racial slurs). I found an interesting essay with the title "Is Huck Finn Racist? (Is Huckleberry Finn really a racist book?)"



Happy reading!

Beth, I just finished chapter 31, and I found the essay you posted to be so helpful. It's a powerful moment (view spoiler)[ when Huck Finn decided that he'd rather be damned to hell than to turn Jim in as a runaway. I think that Twain does a great job in showing Finn's moral development as well as his changing notions about black people as the novel progresses. . . though the path of moral development does not run smoothly. Then again, that's probably true for all of us. (hide spoiler)]

I've been listening to the lovely Elijah Wood version (it's an Audible exclusive), and I think I love listening and reading together because the dialect is so much easier in listening. Also, I think it's almost more jarring to hear some of the slurs spoken aloud than it is just to see them with my eyes.

I wound up using the audio book exclusively; it wasn't holding my interest as well on the page as having it read to me. I'm rating this at 3 stars.

There were some very enjoyable aspects... the relationship between Jim and Huck, Huck's underlying decency despite his upbringing and surface "badness" and his character development over the course of the novel (I agree with you, Rebecca, on what you have under the spoiler tag), the partnering with the King and Duke, and Huck's "biography" of Henry VIII.

That said, overall, I wasn't as deeply engaged with the story as I thought I'd be. It felt more like a collection of short stories with some thin story to tie them together. But the title does say it is Huck's adventures, so maybe that makes sense.

I'm still overwhelmed about how he was treated by his father. (view spoiler)[Kidnapped from a foster home, kept literally locked up, beaten... at one point Huck tells that he was locked away alone for 3 days after being beaten so much that he was "all over welts." (hide spoiler)]

I'm looking forward to reading James next month. And I've suggested Finn: A Novel by Jon Clinch for November; it a modern backstory of Huck's father.

Another interesting article (it's about the musical Big River but also discusses the book itself): Big River and Why It's Never Coming Back to Broadway ().

James is near the top of my list for next month, and I'll join in with Finn, Beth. I like short stories, so the episodic nature of the book isn't bothering me. This Tender Land is one of my lifetime favorite books, and it shares structures with Huckleberry Finn. It's clear that that book was strongly influenced by Huck Finn and The Odyssey, so I might be a little more strongly influenced to like Huck Finn than I would otherwise. (I'm almost, but not quite done with Huck Finn yet.)