On a whim, I picked Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) off my shelf because (1) tax season was becoming onerous and (2) I was consequently in the mood for humor. Its author, Jerome K. Jerome, has written other works, but none of them achieved the popularity of this one. Ostensibly, it is a recounting of a boating trip taken by Jerome and two of his friends and his dog Montmorency up the Thames to Oxford and back.

Along the way, Jerome intersperses interesting historical anecdotes going back to the Roman occupation and the Middle Ages along with what could only be called shaggy dog stories. One of the best of them is about a gigantic trout on display in a glass case in a pub at Streatley. Every person they talk to claims to have caught the fish -- supplying exhaustive details of the struggle to land it. Finally, one of the party, George, accidentally falls into the case and shatters the fish, which, as it turns out, broke into a thousand pieces because it was made of Plaster of Paris.

Perhaps the strangest scene, near Reading, is when the boaters come across the floating body of a woman who had drowned herself because, having brought a child into the world without being married, she was turned out by all her friends and relatives. This incident does not destroy the book, but it is a strange scene to be juxtaposed amid so much self-deprecating humor.

All in all, I think Three Men in a Boat reminds me of Robert Benchley's comedy shorts from the 1940s in that both Benchley and Jerome act on the principle that, if anything can go wrong, it will.