Gulliver's Travels: or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships

by Jonathan Swift
Hennepin County Library audiobook 10 CDs
read by Pamela Garelick
genre: adventure, satire, . . .

I confess . . . I only listened to the first section (out of four). The Lilliputians story made me wonder if I've ever read the full book before, or only abridged and comic strip versions. There was so much more detail than I remember! One thing I thought was "How on earth could the Lilliputians get enough food and water for him? And *why* would they bother?!" That question was addressed (at least the "how" part) later in the story. The logistics of his time in Lilliput were too bizarre for me to contemplate.

I jotted a note "what is it that Swift is satirizing?" Some of it was obvious - the machinations of court and the illogical decrees on things like breaking eggs on the small end vs. the big end. But some of it I'd have to do research to figure out what was going on at that time in history to learn how Swift was mocking it. He was such a clever writer! 

I'm not sure why I'm okay with returning it to the library without "reading" the rest of it. It's just not what I want to read right now.

Gulliver's Travels

by Jonathan Swift
audiobook on CD, Carver County, 11 hours
read by David Case

I was caught by the introduction - Swift would be amazed that this story is considered a "children's book." Though I'm familiar with Swift's satire, my exposure to Gulliver's Travels has mostly been through children's book versions or videos. I was curious to have the full story as Swift wrote it.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't understand some of the political pokes he was making. I don't know much about politics in Europe in the early 1700s, and could tell that he was critiquing (as always) the injustices that he saw around him.

For the most part, I enjoyed this story. It was an interesting mix of satire, adventure, and observation. When he described the Houyhnhnms (horse people), they sound so ideal. But by the end, when he despises Yahoos (humans) and shuns his own wife, I didn't enjoy it so much.

Just went to wikipedia and read about GT. I understand a bit better now. One thing that really struck me while I was listening to the story was the third voyage to Laputa. As Swift bandied about the ideas of Aristotle, Robespierre, etc. I realized that most intelligent people of his day would have known those great thinkers' ideas. I've heard of them and studied them a little bit twenty years ago, but am basically pretty ignorant about their ideas. Interesting to think about. Am I getting less intellectual as I get older? Just more pragmatic? Too darn busy? I can't picture picking up Aristotle right now . . .