Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

I read this because my brother (a big sci-fi reader) sent me the novel To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis for my birthday last summer. The Willis novel was charming and a good reminder that my students should not be misjudged for enjoying science fiction and fantasy, and was chock-full of intertextuality (imagine...sci-fi writers read too). The title comes from the late nineteenth century Jerome work, in which three men and a dog (Montmorency!) take a hapless, boating trip on the Thames. Not a book I'd use in class probably, simply because its lack of narrative cohesiveness is hard for beginners to get away with, but very funny. A sort of Basil Fawlty in a boat.