It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original - at least, not at this moment."
Which is exactly what I wanted to write, except that Jerome K. Jerome, that master of the inconsequential who also wrote "Three Men in a Boat", had beat me to it in his first of altogether fourteen "idle thoughts", entitled "On being hard up". [Keep reading here]
His "mental food" for the English-speaking peoples of the earth" ranges from "On being in the blues" and "On being idle" to "On memory" - a rather hot topic at my CRAFTy age. Not that Jerome K. Jerome (the "K.", by the way, stands for "Klapka" which might explain why he kept it such a secret) took it all that seriously. As he wrote in the preface, "What readers asks now-a-days in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow" - but it certainly has impeccable punctuation as demonstrated by the Oxford comma after "instruct". Jerome Klapka, you're my man!
These are books to be dipped into and laughed over during lazy summer days along the Clyde, in the garden or indeed in front of the fire in mid-winter. As Jerome so self-deprecatingly wrote, "... when you get tired of reading 'the best hundred books', you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change." A friend just did. Thanks for the suggestion, Chris!
Other books by Jerome K. Jerome:
Three Men in a Boat
Three men on the Bummel
They and I
Told After Supper
Passing of the third floor back
The street of the blank wall, and other stories
Idle ideas in 1905
Three men on Wheels
Diary Of A Pilgrimage
All Roads Lead To Calvary
Sketches in Lavender, Blue, and Green
My Life and Times
(to read any of these books, SING UP - it's free! - LOG IN and BORROW)
