Robinson Crusoe

I tried to read Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I really did. But I just could not get in to it. Defoe's style didn't really help matters. He's a big fan of run-on sentences. Here's a sample of a single sentence from this book.

And now, in the managing of my household affairs, I found myself wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make, as indeed as to some of them it was; for instance, I could never made a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or two, as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity of making one by them, though I spend many weeks at it; I could neither put in the heads, or joint the staves so true to one another, as to make them hold water, so I gave that over also.

There are, like, four sentences in there trying to get out. And the entire book is like this. As soon as I started to get into a flow, I'd start stumbling across commas again. The sentences are so unwieldy that I often forgot how they started before I finished them.

Beyond that, the book is boring and repetitive. Crusoe crashes on a deserted island and spend thirty pages describing all the supplies he was able to save from the boat, how he built a shelter, and how he stored everything. When he finally finished, I thought we'd be able to move on to something interesting. But, no. Instead I got this:

I began to keep my journal, of which I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted.

And then we get thirty more pages going over the details of Crusoe removing supplies from the ship, pitching his tent and digging out the cave, and killing goats. Only this time his activities are ordered chronologically.

I told myself I would read to page 100 at least. If I got that far and it still wasn't interesting, then I could put the book down, knowing I had given it an honest go. But before I got quite that far, I discovered that two of the pages were stuck together. They'd never been separated, making it clear that this book had never been read, even though it was one of the classics that my grandfather passed down to my mother.

Despite the introduction telling me that most first editions of this book have been read out of existence, I seem to be in possession of a copy that hasn't been read since it was published in 1941. It has had three owners, and not one of them has made it past page 97. I don't feel so bad about not finishing this book, now.