Thank you for all your kind comments upon The Mark Steyn Club's eighth birthday. Suzanne, a Montreal Steyn Clubber, writes:
On we go indeed!
Wishing you, and everyone else who makes this club such a joy to be a member of, a very happy anniversary. You're absolutely right Mark, the water's fine!
Indeed. So we hope more of your fellow Quebeckers will want to come on in.
Meanwhile, welcome to Part Six of our birthday audio entertainment in Tales for Our Time. For this springtime, we're enjoying Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome, a comic classic that, after a few digressions, is headed for a bicycle ride through the Black Forest. John Barrett, a New Hampshire Steyn Clubber, writes:
Hello Mark,
I'm enjoying Three Men on the Bummel and I knew I would. Jerome's writing, humor (especially), and insights into human nature appeal to me very much. His Three Men in a Boat is my favorite Tale...Which is my second favorite? Why the 'stodgy' - as Club members put it - Riddle of the Sands. Childers's simple, tight, realistic and believable tale of two sailors who stumble on a German fleet prior to World War I. I even enjoyed the nautical descriptions. I've tried other spy/thriller novels - from Buchan to Silva - and find them contrived, meandering, and overdone. I'm done after a few chapters.
I enjoy everything you offer in the Club. Thank you! John
In tonight's episode, the author comes clean about the defects of his work:
I wish here conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings. I wish no one to read this book under a misapprehension.There will be no useful information in this book.Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be able to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would probably lose himself before he got to the Nore. That, at all events, would be the best thing that could happen to him. The farther away from home he got, the greater only would be his difficulties.I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my forte. This belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me by experience.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Six of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We'll be back here with Part Seven of Three Men on the Bummel tomorrow evening. You can listen to it either as an old-fashioned nightly radio romp twenty minutes before you lower your lamp, or save it up for an almighty binge-listen on a long car journey.
If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, you're more than welcome. You can find more information here. And, if you have a chum you think might enjoy Tales for Our Time (so far, we've covered Conan Doyle, Baroness Orczy, Dickens, Forster, Conrad, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Jack London, Jane Austen, P G Wodehouse, Robert Louis Stevenson and more), we've introduced a special Gift Membership that lets you sign up a pal for the Steyn Club. You'll find more details here. Oh, and don't forget, over at the Steyn store, our Steynamite Special Offers on books, CDs, and much more.
