Treasure Island

by: Robert Louis Stevenson
For sheer storytelling delight and pure adventure, Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From the moment young Jim Hawkins first encounters the sinister Blind Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn until the climactic battle for treasure on a tropic isle, the nevel creates scenes and characters that have firetd the imaginations of generations of readers. Written by a superb prose stylist, a master of both action and atmosphere, the story centers upon the conflict between good and evil - but in this case a particularly engaging form of evil. It is the villainy of that most ambiguous rogue Long John Silver that sets the tempo of this tale of treachery, greed, and daring. {cover copy}
I liked this book way more than I expected to. There is a very simple explanation for this: my husband and I were obsessed with Black Sails, which is a show on Starz that is basically meant to be the lead-up of events to this very book. So I was immediately attached to the characters. I guess you could say this book had a head start in terms of whether I was going to like it or not.

Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the 'Admiral Benbow' inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof. {first line}
"They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener."

"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

• eight • {last word}