Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

I'll probably see these very differently in a few years

Two (mostly) cozy books about the escapades of the titular boys in 1840s Missouri. The first is a more lighthearted romp from Tom's POV, while the second picks up soon after the events of the first and follows Huckleberry on quite an adventure down the river.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Much of the first book is spent establishing Tom as the absolute epitome of boyhood through a series of short stories where he gets up to varying levels of mischief. From fooling his peers into paying to paint his fence for him to turning 'pirate' with two other boys for a few days, triggering a desperate search before they show up at their own funeral, he's always looking for the next game to play. One of those games leads to he and Huckleberry stumbling upon something decidedly not a game, at which point the main story picks up.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry starts the second book 'rescued' from his life on the streets by the kind old lady he saved in the last book, but finds life in society not to his liking and takes off down the river with a runaway servant (Jim). They plan to disembark before the Southern states and head off to make their way in the world, but washing past that point into the South presents quite a problem for Jim, given the colour of his skin and the period they live in. Along th way they get involved in an impressive range of escapades, from cross-dressing to family feuds and a fine education in running scams from a duke and king. Eventually Jim finds himself in the trouble he was inevitably going to run into, and an old friend from the first books shows up to 'help' in his own way.

Overall Impressions

I enjoyed the first book more, possibly because I once again started with the second book and was thus missing a bit of context, but also because there's a lot more heavily colloquial language in the second which I'm not familiar with, not being a resident of 1840s America. That made it tough reading at times, but I think I preferred the actual story over the first book's lack of focus in the first half. Both were pretty enjoyable and hold up well for 150 year-old books.