Gulliver's Travels

I'm a few books behind in my reviews, so I'm afraid these may be rather abbreviated.

Jonathan's Swift's classic novel, Gulliver's Travels (Collector's Library), available for free here, chronicles the adventures of Gulliver as he travels about the globe. The tales should be familiar to most English-speaking people because, unless you grew up in a bubble, you've heard references to the Lilliputians and other aspects of Gulliver's travels. In picking up some older classic literature, I can see gaps in my education where I feel like I should have been exposed to these stories at some point and for whatever reason, I had to read crap like Where the Red Fern Grows or Flowers for Algernon instead of more foundational literature. Such is life with a crappy education system.

Anyway, Swift breaks Gulliver's travels into four journeys. The first lands him among the Lilliputians, tiny people who imprison him despite their stature. The second lands him among giants where he's carried about in a luxurious box as a kind of curiosity item in a way that brought to mind Paris Hilton's purse dogs. His third adventure brings him to a floating island with inhabitants that beat on each other to get each other's attention, an action I've been inspired to reproduce on my hubby when he zones out on the NCAA tournament or his blog. And last but not least, Gulliver's last trip takes him to a land of noble horses who rule with such integrity and honor that Gulliver is disgusted and depressed to return to humanity.

The text is a goldmine of ideas on various topics from how to rule to the nature of medicine or the law. My interest was piqued by Swift's descriptions of the nature and causes of various illnesses, which included his character's understanding that some people are born with maladies already upon them--an understanding of genetics without the modern frame of reference.

Would I recommend Gulliver's Travels? If you have a tolerance for political science and policy discussions in your literature, you'll enjoy it. It's not an edge-of-your-seat suspense thrill ride, but it's a slow, thoughtful journey that's interesting for what it can say to the modern reader.