Helpful Score: 1
My nominee for the funniest book in the English language. Very British. Follows the short career of a professor hoping for a permanent job and fouling up royally. First 10 pp. or so off-putting, but if you survive those, it's golden.
This is a darling book. A book club was recommending "books that make you laugh" and this was on it. It was written decades ago, and it witty and fun to read.
One of the funniest books I've read, with a wry appreciation of the trouble people can get themselves into. I believe it is considered a classic.
Book Description
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that "there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones." Kingsley Amis's scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, "If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable."
My Review
This is a very humorous satire about a young academic, Jim Dixon, who works as a medieval history professor at one of England's provincial universities during the 1950's. It pokes fun at people who take themselves too seriously and the boring dinner parties one must attend. Kingsley's writing is amazing and quite poetic at times. It's filled with wit and lots of wisdom. This book is truly a masterpiece and should be read by everyone.
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that "there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones." Kingsley Amis's scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, "If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable."
My Review
This is a very humorous satire about a young academic, Jim Dixon, who works as a medieval history professor at one of England's provincial universities during the 1950's. It pokes fun at people who take themselves too seriously and the boring dinner parties one must attend. Kingsley's writing is amazing and quite poetic at times. It's filled with wit and lots of wisdom. This book is truly a masterpiece and should be read by everyone.
This has to be one of the worst books I've read in years. It seems to go nowhere. Most children act better than the adults in this novel.
