This was NOT a popular book with our group. It is a fun story, but is long, and (I found) was written in a style that was hard to read. I commented that 20 words were used when 1 would suffice - an exaggeration, but I found the wordiness difficult to get past.

Perhaps we're just used to a more modern writing style, but we felt that this may be a book that has suffered in translation, or that the particular translation we read made a difference.

BTW - We have always read classics during our summer hiatus, but the others were always originally in English.