Thursday, February 2, 2017

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain was not a good investor. Though he made a ton of money, he managed to lose it on some terrible investments, and went bankrupt in the process. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have any redeeming qualities we can learn from. He eventually repaid his creditors in full, even though he had no legal obligation to do so. Oh yeah, he was also an author who has been called "the father of American literature".

One of his most popular books is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The character of Sawyer is loosely based on Twain himself as a boy. The book's story gives the reader an idea of what life was like for free people in the southern US before the civil war. The book is not as highly acclaimed as one of Twain's other works, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, though. Truth be told, I only read Tom Sawyer so that I would have all the background for the Huck Finn, which I will read soon.

I found the first half of Tom Sawyer pretty boring, but I'm glad I didn't put it down because the last half was extraordinary. I now look forward to reading Huckleberry Finn, and like it or not, you'll be one of the first to hear what I have to say about it.

3 comments:

juan said...

Looking forward to hearing what you think of Huckleberry Finn - I read it a long time ago, and can't remember almost anything of it (or of the Tom Sawyer book). But if you end up recommending it too, I'll reread both.

Thanks for posting your reviews, Saj. Many of the best books I've read in the past few years have come from those you've recommended here.

By the way, unlike you, I haven't put in the effort to get good at speed reading, but I found an alternative which others might perhaps want to try: I listen to audiobooks at 3x the normal speed on an Olympus voice recorder (much easier than iPhone), and so can get a lot reading (hearing?) done while driving and exercising.

by321 said...

I'm surprised you haven't read these two books yet, since you read a lot, and most active readers read these two books early.

TL,DR: Tom is a conservative investor, Huck is a contrarian investor.

Saj Karsan said...

Thanks, Juan!

Byang, unfortunately I haven't been a reader all my life. I spent the first couple of decades kind of not knowing what I should be doing, and so I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do.