I'm guessing everybody over a certain age has heard of Gulliver's Travels but not everybody has read the actual book. I've had a copy since I was around 10 and it's the one with the lovely red cover as in the picture above. But I never got round to reading it until now and I'm a lot older.
I think part of the reason I never read it as a kid is because it's not necessarily an easy book for a kid to read and even now I can't imagine many kids enjoying it.
It's split into two parts. The first part is where Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the coast of Lilliput, the land of tiny people. And the second part he ends up in the land of the giants, Brobdingnag. Gulliver's Travels is way ahead of it's time for a book written in 1726 and is probably one of the oldest book I've ever read. It is imaginative and pretty clever in the way it describes Gulliver's experiences. You wouldn't really know it was written so long ago if it wasn't for a few places where the book gets bogged down in political and social commentary and those parts are pretty hard to read.
On the whole it's a pretty cool book and I enjoyed it as an adult. It's very different from today's Children's Books. There isn't a lot of action and excitement and I'm not sure what children today would think about it, but I liked it. It's imaginative and clever more than it is exciting. And if you like a bit of political satire and commentary there is a huge chunk of it in this one but I preferred not to get bogged down in all of that. Of the two stories I enjoyed the second and least famous one the most.
It's nice to eventually get to read this beautifully bound book that I've owned since childhood. It really is a lovely cover. And for me its a 4 out of 5 Stars.
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