Treasure Island!!!
Written by Sara Levine
Narrated by Emily Durante
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Sara Levine
Sara Levine is an author, educator, and veterinarian. Her science books for children include the Animal by Animal series, Germs Up Close, and A Peek at Beaks: Tools Birds Use. Her books have received a number of awards including AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize, Utah Beehive Book Award, Cook Prize finalist, Monarch Award master list, and Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year.
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Reviews for Treasure Island!!!
114 ratings23 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5What started out as a book I was ready to rate 4 stars half way through became a book that I generously gave 2. The dark humor in the book suddenly took a turn to the totally unfunny and the annoying main character made me want to hurl the book across the room and hope something dark and unfunny happened to her!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book was entertaining and very well written. However I have to give it three stars because the main character was so awful. I should probably give it a higher rating because the author made me feel so much but oh well. :)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imagine that you have decided to take Stevenson's [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. Wait - imagine that you are a sociopathically un-self-aware 20-something, and you've decided to take [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. You work out that the book's Core Values are BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE and HORN-BLOWING, and you try and put them into practice in your daily life. When our unnamed narrator attempts this, she rapidly brings chaos into her own life and the lives of those around her. This part of the book was hilarious - I laughed out loud every couple of pages, as her behaviour became bigger and wilder. But at some point the reader notices the clues scattered through the book, suggesting what she might have been like before she adopted this boldness. If there was a problem with this book, it was the disconnect between the two sides of her personality. She's just so good at being a larger-than-life, monstrous character - it's hard to see how she transformed from someone so different. Worse, I can understand why she preferred the new persona, destructive and heedless of others as it was. I was a little disappointed by the resolution of the book, which leaves her wiser but more restrained: a nicer person to know, for sure, but a less fun one to read about.But the twists in the book mean that I think next time I read it I will see more in it; and I am sure I will read it again.Sometimes I consider BOLDNESS a quality one has or does not have; other times I think of BOLDNESS as a quality one chooses to cultivate or to let wither on the vine.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cute and funny, a nice summer read. Of course a large part of the humor stems from the narrator's utter self-absorption and unreliability.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Short easy read.
What a path one can take when deciding to live by the core values of the real "Treasure Island":
Boldness
Resolution
Independence
Horn Blowing
Twisting, unusual set of plots.
Might not be what expected - but you can always stop if it annoys you. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The second book I read this year with an exclamation mark in the title (and this one has three of them, which is three times as exciting as Swamplandia!), also one of the better books I've read this year--the best not to make any yearend best books lists (possibly because of its December publication date).
Treasure Island!!! is told in the first person by a narrator who is hilarious, quirky and as self-centered as she is completely unselfaware. She is a recent college graduate stuck in a series of dead end jobs, most recently working part-time in a "pet library" where people can rent pets for a few days at a time. The book begins with her discovery of the book Treasure Island and the story is about her increasing obsession with modeling her life after the hero, Jim Hawkins.
She reads Treasure Island over and over again the exclusion of everything else. She believes she can divine key life lessons and values from it that she puts on index cards and uses as a model for her own life, and she even goes so far as to buy a parrot. She finds so many layers to Treasure Island but hilariously seems to be blissfully unaware that it is a pirate story and to not know many of the basic aspects of what it is actually about.
Treasure Island!!! follows the standard downward spiral of an addiction story, but does it with over-the-top zaniness, wit, charm, and insight unintentionally shed on the people around her and herself. Every page sparkled and it was hard to put it down until reading to the very end. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this after hearing about it in Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. I absolutely LOVED this book. It's hilarious but simultaneously so clearly captures this element of being lost in your 20s. The use of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to anchor this novel is an inspired choice. Clearly my life needs more horn-blowing!Also, I was reading this on my commute and someone on the train mistook it for the original Treasure Island, and went on and on about how much he'd loved that book as a teenage boy, which was so appropriate and added a nice meta level of hilarity in my life.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The author did a great job sustaining the voice, but honestly after a while I just wanted the narrator to die in a fire. A little bit one-note for me. Hard to believe that a 172-page book is too long, but that's how it felt.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A wickedly funny book about a 28-year-old underemployed college graduate?she works in a ?pet library,? which lends out small animals?who causes all kinds of trouble when she becomes obsessed with ?Treasure Island? and starts to live her life according to its four core values: Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and Horn-Blowing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A wickedly funny book about a 28-year-old underemployed college graduate—she works in a “pet library,” which lends out small animals—who causes all kinds of trouble when she becomes obsessed with “Treasure Island” and starts to live her life according to its four core values: Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and Horn-Blowing.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I found myself laughing at parts and rubbed the wrong way at parts. I understand that the protagonist is meant to be obnoxious in a variety of ways, but sometimes I was thinking to myself "alright alright, we get it" I did still want to know what happened though, so wanting to finish it counts for something.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kind of a one-trick pony, but she did a good job with it and it was fun in a car-crash kind of way. Horrible narrator without a single redeeming feature, which is always worth reading.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
I enjoyed this book. The bit about driving is pretty relevant to my own feelings. Would I want the main character in my life? Not particularly. But it was an enjoyable quick read. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A black comedy, in which the narrator is not so much undependable as full of bad choices, misperceptions, self-absorptions, fixations, and delusions. Her unexpected interpretations of the transparently caring, annoyed, or indulgent attitudes of her friends and family provide the humor. It's a difficult setup for a novel, because the kinds of misinterpretations have to be continuously varied so that the narrator isn't always simply imagining selfish or self-justifying explanations for other people's unselfish or critical concerns. It works best when the narrator's mistaken perceptions are unexpected, and it avoids what I imagine must have been a temptation to have the narrator become progressively more deluded.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Super-fast and wacky read about a woman who becomes obsessed with the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and decides to live her life by it. She ends up losing her job, moving in with her parents, and basically bringing misery to all around her...and her hated parrot, Little Richard. Mad cap and zany are also appropriate descriptors for this book. The author drops you right into the story, and doesn't worry about spending a ton of time introducing you to each character, which some people may have issues with. Fast fun, I look forward to seeing more from Sara Levine.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Read this book since it was recommended by local librarian. One of those irritating books that never got better.An obsession with RL Stevenson turns crazy, the narrator is completely selfish and can only think about herself.Skip the book, absolute waste of time
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A college graduate reads Robert Louise Stevenson's Treasure Island and becomes obsessed with Jim Hawkins and his adventures. She uses the book as her guide to living, seeking adventure where she can, but without taking responsibility for her own life. Her pursuit of the Core Values of boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing lead her to an Amazonian parrot, an unambitious boyfriend, moving back in with her parents, and a family crisis. It could have been more entertaining if not for the rather irritating voice of the narrator.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don’t take anything in this book at face value; it’s all a farce of the highest order.Either that or our main character and heroine is the most self-centered, obnoxious, hard-to-get-along-with human being on the planet. With family and friends who are not far down the path themselves.This has to be one of the oddest books I’ve ever read. Yes, odder than 1Q84. At least that book was set in an alternate universe.Not so this story, with a main character who works at a pet library, who reads Treasure Island and decides it has changed her life, who buys a parrot with money stolen from petty cash at the pet library, with a sister who is having an affair with the same elderly man that her own mother once slept with…It just goes on and on. I can think of a dozen people who would loathe this book. Abhor. Possibly set on fire.On the other hand, I can think of a dozen people who might think this Treasure Island (don’t forget the !!!) has changed their lives.You decide.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The tale of a young woman who becomes enamored with the classic novel “Treasure Island” and wants to use it to guide her life. At first this seems like an endearing and noble obsession (“If life were a sea adventure, I knew: I wouldn’t be a sailor, pirate, or cabin boy but more likely a barnacle clinging to the side of the boat. Why not rise, I thought.”), then it becomes apparent that the girl is shallow, cruel and manipulative. Original, funny, and a joy to read from beginning to end.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A wickedly funny book about a 28-year-old underemployed college graduate—she works in a “pet library,” which lends out small animals—who causes all kinds of trouble when she becomes obsessed with “Treasure Island” and starts to live her life according to its four core values: Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and Horn-Blowing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The second book I read this year with an exclamation mark in the title (and this one has three of them, which is three times as exciting as Swamplandia!), also one of the better books I've read this year--the best not to make any yearend best books lists (possibly because of its December publication date).Treasure Island!!! is told in the first person by a narrator who is hilarious, quirky and as self-centered as she is completely unselfaware. She is a recent college graduate stuck in a series of dead end jobs, most recently working part-time in a "pet library" where people can rent pets for a few days at a time. The book begins with her discovery of the book Treasure Island and the story is about her increasing obsession with modeling her life after the hero, Jim Hawkins.She reads Treasure Island over and over again the exclusion of everything else. She believes she can divine key life lessons and values from it that she puts on index cards and uses as a model for her own life, and she even goes so far as to buy a parrot. She finds so many layers to Treasure Island but hilariously seems to be blissfully unaware that it is a pirate story and to not know many of the basic aspects of what it is actually about.Treasure Island!!! follows the standard downward spiral of an addiction story, but does it with over-the-top zaniness, wit, charm, and insight unintentionally shed on the people around her and herself. Every page sparkled and it was hard to put it down until reading to the very end.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is about an obsession with a book that goes wayyyyyyy to far. The "heroine" of the book (who never gives us her name), a 25 year old just drifting about without any sort of ambition but a history of crappy jobs, gets goaded into reading Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". She gets swept up in the sense of adventure and decides to live her own life based on what she deems are the "Core Values" of the book: Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-Blowing. And so her own adventure begins--with some hilarious results and no few character quirks that left me alternately wanting to straggle her, laughing out loud or cringing--sometimes all at the same time. This is another interesting debut novel by an award winning essayist and well worth the time to read in the name of good fun.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was fun rooting against her: horrible, horrible woman that she was. Lars don't do it!! Watch out Rena! Adrianna tell her nothing!