Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
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tobookclubJudging from the poll, it looks like we've agreed to read Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894). Of the nine people who voted in the poll, that's what eight of us voted for. It's been over a week, so we can assume that voting has ended in that poll, since a week was all I expected to give it; that's enough chance for anyone.
Front cover illustration, one of many editions listed on
the Jungle Book Collection.
As mentioned before: The Jungle Book's copyright has expired and it has entered the public domain, so you can legally download a free copy of it from the Gutenberg Project. If you're picking up a copy from a library or bookstore, take note that The Jungle Book has been published in many editions, and they're not all the same. Some of them have marvelous and worthwhile illustrations added, but make sure you're reading one that says it's "Complete and Unabridged!" Some editions are combined with its sequel, The Second Jungle Book, as The Jungle Books together (as in the image above), which is fine. Other editions are reduced and abridged, such as the ones retitled as Mowgli or All the Mowgli Stories, which has removed the parts that don't have Mowgli in them. It's been translated into all kinds of different languages, although English was its first. There's at least one annotated version, which adds some context that may answer some questions that tend to come up.
Personally, I'll be comparing between a few copies of The Jungle Book: I'll read the text file on my Palm whenever and wherever I find the time for leisure reading, and I'm picking up an ordinary unabridged copy from the library (which I'll use for citing page numbers), as well as the annotated edition (which would have less standard pagination). Hopefully I'll find the time for it... these next couple months look like they're just going to get busier.
I encourage you to read the WikiPedia (online encyclopedia) entry about The Jungle Book, since it tells a lot about the significance of the books: their history and origins, and the effects they've had on culture throughout the world. Those are the bones of what makes a "classic" book: something of enough substance that it not only stands the test of time, but also becomes a part of a culture.
I started reading The Jungle Book this morning. I could have sworn that I'd read a good part of it back in elementary school, but apparently I'd just read some excerpts from it in other collections or readers. That's one of the other things about classics, whether they're books or movies: you can think that you've read/watched the story itself, but it turns out you'd just picked up some information about it because it's a part of the culture. Since you've seen and heard bits of them since forever, you can know a good part of Citizen Kane or It's A Wonderful Life before actually seeing them from start to finish, and that's quite a different and surprising experience. The Jungle Book is being entirely new to me, and it's different from how I expected it.
I can see how it became a classic: it's unique in its type of story, and the writing-skill itself is unusually fine. The language used in The Jungle Book is more formal and dignified than the playful rhythm of wordplay that Kipling used in Just-So Stories, something like the difference in voice between Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was initially a bit perplexed by that difference, since it almost felt like they weren't written by the same person. The difference is enhanced even farther with The Silmarillion, which is so biblical in its language that I decided to read it some other time when I felt like climbing such an imposing mountain.) In The Jungle Book, Kipling shows a knack for selecting just which things to describe in detail, and which to leave for the reader to work out for himself/herself: enough information to establish and to inspire, where a surplus of information would give the impression of spoon-feeding a story to a callow reader. This selectiveness is something that happens both with careful editing, and with epic works where a writer has imagined so much material that they can only afford to write down the important parts, without flowery diversions.
(I think that's why Tolkien's writing-voice changed so much with each book: the project got bigger and bigger, and he had to be pickier and pickier about what parts went down on paper, because it was too huge to ever tell it all. Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series is also written with that useful handicap, since it takes place in a setting that she's been building since her youth; she can't take the time to explain everything to you because it would take too long, so she treats as a native to that world who is already familiar with its society and workings, and you have to figure the rest out for yourself. I spent ages rereading her King of the Cats before I even began to understand what was going on in the Nyima society, what and why they were doing the curious things that they were. Sorting out that puzzle was as mentally challenging as solving any other mystery from a set of intriguing clues.)
I'm not saying that The Jungle Book is a minimalist work, no, not at all; but as with Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte [1979]), some of the most intriguing parts are those which are implied, so it gives the impression of an immense and intricate world where only the most necessary surfaces are scratched. Furthermore, leaving unsaid details open for the readers to speculate and argue over tends to encourage a sense of actively participating in the re-creation of a story. Each person has to figure the story out for himself/herself, and that's part of what makes it exciting and interesting. Perhaps that's a thing of preference, though... how about you?
Front cover illustration, one of many editions listed on
the Jungle Book Collection.
As mentioned before: The Jungle Book's copyright has expired and it has entered the public domain, so you can legally download a free copy of it from the Gutenberg Project. If you're picking up a copy from a library or bookstore, take note that The Jungle Book has been published in many editions, and they're not all the same. Some of them have marvelous and worthwhile illustrations added, but make sure you're reading one that says it's "Complete and Unabridged!" Some editions are combined with its sequel, The Second Jungle Book, as The Jungle Books together (as in the image above), which is fine. Other editions are reduced and abridged, such as the ones retitled as Mowgli or All the Mowgli Stories, which has removed the parts that don't have Mowgli in them. It's been translated into all kinds of different languages, although English was its first. There's at least one annotated version, which adds some context that may answer some questions that tend to come up.
Personally, I'll be comparing between a few copies of The Jungle Book: I'll read the text file on my Palm whenever and wherever I find the time for leisure reading, and I'm picking up an ordinary unabridged copy from the library (which I'll use for citing page numbers), as well as the annotated edition (which would have less standard pagination). Hopefully I'll find the time for it... these next couple months look like they're just going to get busier.
I encourage you to read the WikiPedia (online encyclopedia) entry about The Jungle Book, since it tells a lot about the significance of the books: their history and origins, and the effects they've had on culture throughout the world. Those are the bones of what makes a "classic" book: something of enough substance that it not only stands the test of time, but also becomes a part of a culture.
I started reading The Jungle Book this morning. I could have sworn that I'd read a good part of it back in elementary school, but apparently I'd just read some excerpts from it in other collections or readers. That's one of the other things about classics, whether they're books or movies: you can think that you've read/watched the story itself, but it turns out you'd just picked up some information about it because it's a part of the culture. Since you've seen and heard bits of them since forever, you can know a good part of Citizen Kane or It's A Wonderful Life before actually seeing them from start to finish, and that's quite a different and surprising experience. The Jungle Book is being entirely new to me, and it's different from how I expected it.
I can see how it became a classic: it's unique in its type of story, and the writing-skill itself is unusually fine. The language used in The Jungle Book is more formal and dignified than the playful rhythm of wordplay that Kipling used in Just-So Stories, something like the difference in voice between Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was initially a bit perplexed by that difference, since it almost felt like they weren't written by the same person. The difference is enhanced even farther with The Silmarillion, which is so biblical in its language that I decided to read it some other time when I felt like climbing such an imposing mountain.) In The Jungle Book, Kipling shows a knack for selecting just which things to describe in detail, and which to leave for the reader to work out for himself/herself: enough information to establish and to inspire, where a surplus of information would give the impression of spoon-feeding a story to a callow reader. This selectiveness is something that happens both with careful editing, and with epic works where a writer has imagined so much material that they can only afford to write down the important parts, without flowery diversions.
(I think that's why Tolkien's writing-voice changed so much with each book: the project got bigger and bigger, and he had to be pickier and pickier about what parts went down on paper, because it was too huge to ever tell it all. Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series is also written with that useful handicap, since it takes place in a setting that she's been building since her youth; she can't take the time to explain everything to you because it would take too long, so she treats as a native to that world who is already familiar with its society and workings, and you have to figure the rest out for yourself. I spent ages rereading her King of the Cats before I even began to understand what was going on in the Nyima society, what and why they were doing the curious things that they were. Sorting out that puzzle was as mentally challenging as solving any other mystery from a set of intriguing clues.)
I'm not saying that The Jungle Book is a minimalist work, no, not at all; but as with Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte [1979]), some of the most intriguing parts are those which are implied, so it gives the impression of an immense and intricate world where only the most necessary surfaces are scratched. Furthermore, leaving unsaid details open for the readers to speculate and argue over tends to encourage a sense of actively participating in the re-creation of a story. Each person has to figure the story out for himself/herself, and that's part of what makes it exciting and interesting. Perhaps that's a thing of preference, though... how about you?
