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Legendary Mashine · Jolene

Book Review - Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Usually, people don't read nonfiction books for fun, and with good reason. They often don't flow nearly as well as fiction books do, and are tedious to read. Frequently, they're not very accessible to everyone, and may even be only appealing to people who are just very interested in the topic at hand. It's hard to make a nonfiction book that lots of people will enjoy. However, one good way to make a nonfiction book both informative and enjoyable is to present information while making people laugh, and Mark Twain is most certainly good at making people laugh.

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Book Review - Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Usually, people don't read nonfiction books for fun, and with good reason. They often don't flow nearly as well as fiction books do, and are tedious to read. Frequently, they're not very accessible to everyone, and may even be only appealing to people who are just very interested in the topic at hand. It's hard to make a nonfiction book that lots of people will enjoy. However, one good way to make a nonfiction book both informative and enjoyable is to present information while making people laugh, and Mark Twain is most certainly good at making people laugh.
Because of the humor, Life on the Mississippi becomes interesting to those who would not otherwise enjoy an informative book about steamboating. The book is quite long, contains a significant amount of side-information that does not seem relevant to the topic, and is not a leisurely read. It can become quite tedious at times, like many nonfiction books are. If you didn't have a previous interest in steamboating, the book starts to look like something you don't want to read. Press on, however; once the book gets going, the humor will put a smile on your face.
The book is a true account of Mark Twain's life as a steamboat pilot, and therefore most of the humor is due to the funny things that he actually did. For example, he had become an experienced and well-known steamboat pilot when he was younger. Upon the start of the Civil War, and while steamboats were being slowly replaced by trains, he stopped being a pilot and pursued other careers. Later, as written about in the second half of this book, he went back to travel the river as a passenger on steamboats, to see how things had changed. While he was traveling he pretended to be someone else so his former co-workers would not recognize him! That way, the reader does not only learn about the war and the decline of boating, but can laugh at Twain's antics as he tries to keep his true self under wraps.
Quite possibly the best way to enjoy this book is to read it in conjunction with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you read this book on its own, you will be amused and informed; if you read Huck Finn on its own, you will enjoy that tale as well. However, if you read them together, in enriches both reading experiences. You can see how Twain's real-life experiences shaped his fiction writing. Both are centered around the Mississippi River, take place in the same time period, and are very humorous, so reading them together will not only amuse you but give you a true sense of what America was like in the mid-1800's, before, during, and after the Civil War. It is a learning experience about an important time in our nation's history.
Overall, this is a very good book that I would recommend. If you want to learn about steamboating, the Mississippi River, or the Civil War, then this book is a great read. Even if you don't want to learn about those things, give this book a quick read anyway; the humor will get you interested, and you'll end up learning about those things too. In conjunction with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reading this gives you a full experience of America during that time period. Therefore, this book is something you should definitely read.