About the book: 1979 / Three friends: George, Harris and Jay (short for Jerome) plan to take a pleasure boat trip up the Thames. They intend to have great fun, take a break from London with its unhealthy climate and merge with nature. On the thread of the narrative about the journey along the river, the author strings, like beads, everyday episodes, anecdotes, funny adventures and in the end they safely arrive in London, where an excellent dinner in a restaurant reconciles them with life, and they raise their glasses to their wise last act. If you want to know what real English humor is (yes, yes, there is such a thing), then Jerome K. Jerome and his novel “Three Men in a Boat” is exactly what you need. This is a truly amazing story, the author of which claims that the only thing he claims with his work is the truthfulness of everything he talks about. So, three English gentlemen (and one dog) are going to go on a trip along the river in order to improve their health and take a break from everyday life . And along the way, of course, many very interesting events happen to them, which, alas, cannot be discussed in this short summary. But more amazing are the stories that the author and his friends tell, commenting with them on literally every important (and not so important) incident . The heroes of these stories turned out to be so similar in detail to many of my relatives, close and distant acquaintances that when I first read the book, I was amazed how an English gentleman who lived in the nineteenth century managed to know them all. And only then, much later, did I begin to pay attention to the fact that the contemporaries of an Englishman in the nineteenth century were completely indistinguishable from a resident of any developed country in the twenty-first century. The man had not changed at all! If you don’t believe me, try reading the novel “Three Men in a Boat, Not Counting a Dog,” and I’m willing to bet five to one that there will definitely be characters who are exactly like people you personally know (if it’s not you ).Honestly, I have never seen anything like it in any book. But I recommend the book “Three in a Boat and a Dog” for completely different reasons. Laughter is, of course, good and useful, but it is much more useful to be able to see the funny in our not at all funny life. I myself sometimes, when I find myself in extreme distress, suddenly remember that the heroes of Jerome K. Jerome's stories have already found themselves in similar situations, and I realize that everything is not so bad, since I can laugh. Illustrations by artist I. M. Semenov