Tres Homes Dins D'una Barca (sense Comptar-Hi El Gos)

Three Victorian-era men decide they're desperately ill and only a quiet boating trip can save them. They pack enough food to feed a small army, acquire a dog who may or may not be sensible, and set off down the River Thames with catastrophic results. They fall in. They get lost. They argue about the correct way to pack a hamper. They venture into Hampton Court Maze and emerge older, wiser, and more confused than when they went in. What elevates this 1889 comic masterpiece beyond mere farce is Jerome K. Jerome's gorgeous, meandering narrative voice, which gets distracted by tangents, philosophical musings, and increasingly absurd digressions while the actual boat trip happens almost in spite of itself. The three friends are wonderfully realized: the narrator who can never quite finish a story, Harris who confidently makes everything worse, and George who owns the boat and regrets everything. Their hypochondria, their petty disagreements, and their absolute certainty that they are doomed men make them oddly recognizable across a century later. This is a book about doing precisely nothing in the most exhausting, hilarious way possible.