Find The Swiss Family Robinson Authored By Elizabeth Janeway Available As Publication

had no idea this one had so many negative reviews, . . oh well, it appears I am once again in the minority, although funnily enough now I'm apparently the only one who loves this, while everyone else hates it.
Never mind, someone has to hold down the fort,

This has always been my favourite classic I read this first when I was about ten and I've reread it occasionally ever since, I think this may be my fourth or fifth time rereading it, It's great.

This is how you write a story about a shipwreck on a desert island without being incredibly boring, HINT HINT MR, LOUIS STEVENSON. Stop right now! Before you read this book, I must warn you! The back of the book is a LIE! All of that "they must rely on their wits, the strength that comes from family ties, and the bounty of nature to survive" is all a crock of baloney.
Complete fabrication. They're stranded with enough supplies to start a small colony, Guns amp timber from the shipwreck I could understand, but butter, livestock, tools, blacksmith tools, fishing hooks, needle, thread, extra clothes, enough seeds to start a garden if not a farm, and a complete working boat with a CANNON!! Not to mention an island so hospitable it has salt for preserving, cotton, flax, rubber, and an overabundance of game.
It would be more surprising, if they all died, Not to mention, that every chapter reads like a howtobook, I can almost hear the conversation with the publisher,

Publisher: Johann, no one wants to read this howtomanual, It's boring. And there are dozens more just like it, It's needs something extra, a hook, some zing,
Johann: But this is useful!
Publisher: I know, put it on a desert island! Forced to rely on their wits alone! They'll have to do everything with the bounty of nature.
No modern tools!
Johann: No! How can I do that
Publisher: They'll love it! Go on,
Johann: Fine.
Ten days later
Publisher: What is this
Johann: You said put it on a desert island, They're on a desert island,
Publisher: But you gave them everything! Where's the hardship Where's the people starving Where's the adventure
Johann: This is adventure! It's hard work to start a village! They work hard in almost every chapter, plus I added games and parables for the little children.

Publisher: Fine, fine, but I can't guarantee that anyone will buy it,

Seriously, if you want a cute story about people starting a colony on a desert island with all the necessary tools go for it.
Personally, I think it reads like a howtomanual, but if you like that, then this book is for you, I'm not saying it's poorly written, or that it's not a cute little story, but it's not the adventure it's made out to be, Hell it doesn't even have much of a plot, So if you're looking for an island adventure book, find a different one, This book was almost mildly entertaining until it became disgustingly unbearable, In truth I only listened to half of the book, I decided to listen to it based on fond memories of the tv show from when I was a child, but It was honestly a complete waste ofhours of my life.
. . even though I was working, . .
The writing of this book is completely lost to the ages and changes in societal beliefs

Enter this father that seems to know every little thing about surviving in the wilderness, so much so that even though they knew they had a crate full of medical supplies he didn't even need to open it untilish years after they landed because he knew how to extract medicines from plants.
and keep in mind he has likeyoung boys

This douche narrates a story that is almost more like a wilderness survival guide than a story, except for its lack of any pertinent information on how to actually survive a similar situation.


This douche is seemingly the only man in the world that 'god' cares for because every time a situation appears that would pose a massive challenge he simply prays and it magically appears ie bees hollowing out the exact tree they had decided to use as a tree house from the bottom to the top so that he could simply build a spiral staircase on the inside good thing that among studying with a surgeon, learning about natural medicines in this exact climate, learning how natives turned random nuts into bowls and learning how to tan leather, he also studied as a carpenter and a ship builder fuck

And amazingly having all these skills going into this situation, this douche still sits there preaching about 'god', as if his douche life of learning completely random skills didn't luckily douche out and douche him into douchery.


But I douchegress, Don't waste your time on this book, it will only leave you wanting for a sweeter time in your life, a time when fairies still danced upon the morning dew, A time when thunder sounded like a brave lions roar, A time when geese flew in perfect V's and not strange Tilde shapes, A time long before you decided to open this book of rank douchery, I liked the story well enough, If I had read a decent translation I might have given itstars, It's a great concept, being stranded on a beautiful tropical island, Their perception overyears ago would be quite different than ours today, Some things that bothered me were the stereotyping regarding race and religion, and the senseless killing of the wildlife they came across, But it's an adventure story and it's entertaining from that aspect, It left me wanting to know what happened later, his afterword only accounted foryears, I understand Jules Verne wrote a sequel to Wyss' classic, I may have to see how that goes, they kill or enslave everything in sight, whether they need it or not, they pray before they do anything, i'm pretty sure the matriarch of the family was never actually named, but merely called "the mother" or "my wife" any time she was relevant, which was not very often.
near the end of the book, the family actually shoots a cachalot, they don't use it for anything, but instead axe the head open and take away buckets of spermaceti, a whole fucking sperm whale had to die just because they saw it, killed it, and as an afterthought figured they could use the head innards presumably for candlemaking.
fucking book. it was overly moralizing and offensive in so many bits, yet i found myself bringing it up in conversation with people, frustrating, but i suppose quite memorable, i had the same problem with white fang and the call of the wild, actually, also, how lucky were they at every regular meal, they were eating better than i am able to and knew every last thing about where they were stranded, except for exactly where they were.
makes sense. speaking of where they were, where were they i thought that maybe they were somewhere like new zealand when they started shooting penguins, but that didn't make sense and the closest i've come to figuring it out has been that they were probably in an archipelago off portugal, but i don't know.
maybe they were in a different dimension where people talk about providence all the time and suck majorly, except for the gay one, he was all right. Wow. What a relief to have that out of the way, . . I have been painstakingly pushing my way through this book for a while now, Having said that, I always thought that The Swiss Family Robinson was just the type of story that I would like, Going into it, my expectations were high and I think my enthusiasm barreled me past the first few chapters without so much as a literary bump.
But just like trying to race up Everest, you lose steam after the first hundred yard sprint and the rest is pure drudgery, The unfortunate thing is that there was no sense of satisfaction upon finishing The Swiss Family Robinson as there would be in peaking Everest, only relief.


Here is the problem as I see it, and I will use the narrator's own words towards the end of the novel to explain it: "It is needless for me to continue what would exhaust the patience of the most longsuffering, by repeating monotonous narratives of exploring parties and hunting expeditions, wearisome descriptions of awkward inventions and clumsy machines, with an endless record of discoveries, more fit for the pages of an encyclopedia than a book of family history.
" Wow. Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr, Robinsonthough your realization of those things was about twohundred and fifty pages too late,

While I can't say it better, I will sum it up: nothing happens, Oh, sure, they keep building these paradisaical, tropical mansions, lacking only

in electronics and internet because those things haven't been invented yet, but whatexactlyis happening Nothing.
The biggest conflicts they have are brought up one paragraph and resolved in the next, And then there are the characters, I originally loved the idea of a family being the protagonist, instead of just some single, adult male like in most stories, But I think Wyss could have put more personality into a single, adult boulder than he did in this entire family, That's not to say that there aren't distinguishing personality traits, The chief one of the narrator is that he is annoying, smug, and wholly unbelievable, Every idea he tried, he immediately succeeded at accomplishing, even if the whole human race had been trying the same feat, unsuccessfully, for thousands of years with plenty more resources.
Any animal or plant he saw, he immediately knew the scientific classification, background, and general usage for it as if reading out of the page of an encyclopedia an interesting study would be to find the Swiss encyclopedias of the time and find out which ones Wyss plagiarized from, probably verbatim in most instances, in order to piece together Mr.
Robinson's immaculate naturalist knowledge.

Perhaps I am being harsh, . . okay, yes, I am being harsh, especially for a book meant for children, But I think that even children have a right to expect simple things like PLOT or DEVELOPED CHARACTERS as part of their reading experience, However, I realize that the book is up against some pretty stiff prejudices of mine, You see, before reading this, I had also read The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, This one also has castaways on a destitute island who are able to create amazingly advanced machines, technology, and shelters with very limited resources more limited than the Robinson family's, even.
Yet, I did not balk at incredulity when Cyrus Harding moved from one advancement to another, or accessed astonishing amounts of information using his memory alone.
The reason why I believe it is because Verne actually knew what his characters were talking about, Rather than slapping something from an encyclopedia entry and passing off haphazard hypotheses, Verne had actually thought these things through, understood the implications and context of each thing, and put forward a fascinating, but credible solution.


Besides The Mysterious Island, I had also seen the Disney movie, The Swiss Family Robinson, Such a great, great movieone of my all time favorite, in fact, How did it attain that status It made realistic characters that you could believe in and distinguish, one from another, It truly made the family the protagonist, It cared about the characters first, and the cool treehouse secondary although, you have to admit, the treehouse in that movie is AMAZING, And finally, there was a plot! The characters were constantly working with an underlying conflict, and it culminated in a worthy climax, In short, the movie fixed everything that was wrong with the book, . . and they excelled at the few things the book got right such as the treehouse, the appearance of another character later on in the story, and the references to pirates.
Going into the reading with these expectations, it is little wonder that Johann Wyss is getting the brunt of my frustrations here, but in reality the book is harmless.
Long, boring, and redundant but harmless. It is a great idea, some unique settings, and some simple fun, It is just a matter of sifting through all of the drudgery to get them, .