recumbent
Number of pages: 320
I read this book a while back and decided to give it another go. Shortly after starting my re-read, I looked on Goodreads and was surprised to see that everyone who read it was either giving it five stars or one star.
For me, this book was somewhere in between these two extremes; not brilliant, but not terrible either. There were a few things I forgot, such as the fact that Crusoe was not shipwrecked until a few chapters in, or the fact that the other most well-known character, Man Friday, did not show up until about two thirds of the way into the book. As a result, most of the book portrays Robinson Crusoe alone on the island, and there are several chapters that describe how he adapts to life on his own, and having to be self-sufficient. Later on in the book, there are gruesome depictions of cannibalistic tribes who Crusoe encounters on the island, which become very disturbing in places.
The book is entirely told in first-person narrative, from Crusoe's point of view, occasionally providing his own journal entries. I was surprised by the fact that there was very little dialogue, even when he eventually met Man Friday, with only descriptions of events; this made this book quite difficult to read at times.
Overall, I found this book reasonably enjoyable, but it did feel very slow-moving during the first half. I remember that the book went on for longer than I expected after his eventual escape from the island, and towards the end I started to lose interest, and I did notice that the ending felt surprisingly abrupt.
This book is worth trying, but you will need to be very patient.
Next book: The Tales of Beedle the Bard (J.K. Rowling)
