Name: Treasure Island
ISBN: 9781584725565

Treasure Island

Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is an adventure tale known for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature then and now. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels. The influence of Treasure Island on popular perceptions of pirates is enormous, including treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen carrying parrots on their shoulders

What Hacker News says

NishanStepakSep 2026

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson. Sometimes it is good to go back to the classics. The copy which I read was illustrated by N.C. Wyeth which made it especially fun to read.

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prewettJan 2026

Perhaps it is worth noting that Brett Devreaux skewered this guy (regarding a different topic) in his latest acoup.blog.

I'm actually sympathetic with his perspective, and I was frustrated by Mary Beard's "SQPR" when she kept saying things like "of course, this list of consuls cannot possibly be right", because, of course ancient people can't even keep a quality list over 300 years. And in any case, they were a lot closer to it that Beard is, so it's as good as it's going to get. I find what passes for virtue in elite circles to be appalling, self-righteous, and uninteresting, so I'm not likely to be reading new books without good quality recommendations. (But that would be the case anyway, I only have N book-readings to spend in my life, no point spending them on anything poor.)

But fiction is absolutely worth reading. First, as entertainment it beats all the passive forms. Also, books don't dumb things down to the lowest denominator like American television does. But you can actually learn a lot from fiction. O'Henry gives a picture of NYC in 1900, Jane Austen gives a flavor of lower-elite Edwardian life, etc. Good fiction tends to deal with tensions of life, like duty/delight, or in Austen's case the need to marry well to have enough money to live like you were raised but you also need to find a man worth marrying. And, of course, the perspectives you get reading Iliad, Beowulf, Treasure Island, and Tolkien are all very different, which will expand your mind, too.

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TarsulDec 2025

Just read Treasure Island. It's a classic but one that is easy to comprehend and also timeless.

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ChristopherDrumDec 2025

I tried to read a mix of things, especially "classics I never got around to." I didn't meet my personal target of 30 books (got sidetracked writing my blog), but definitely read things that stuck with me.

Notable and beautiful

- "The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead

- "Blind Sight" by Meg Howrey

- "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. LeGuin

Non-fiction

- "Workflow"

- "Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D"

- "Debugging: The 9 Indispensible Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems"

The rest (all first-time reads)

- "Absolution" by Jeff Vandermeer (I enjoyed it but it was kind of unnecessary)

- "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte (I don't get the fascination with it)

- "Strange Pictures" by Uketsu (odd)

- "Starship Troopers" by Heinlein

- "Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke

- "Ubik" by Philip K. Dick

- "Mickey 7" by Edward Ashton

- "Fugitive Telemetry" and "System Collapse" by Martha Wells

- "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson (I was surprisingly into it)

- "Glass Houses" by Madeline Ashby

- "Cover Her Face" by P.D.James

- "The Crystal Shard" by R.A.Salvatore (I needed to see what Drizzt is all about)

- "James" by Percival Everett (maybe my biggest disappointment of the year)

- "Alien Clay" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

- "Some Desperate Glory" by Emily Tesh

- "Sea of Rust" by C. Robert Cargill

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johndhiOct 2025

Thanks for posting. Every time I've read a RLS book lately I've been blown away by how entertaining and well done they are.

Treasure Island - pure gold. Kidnapped - gold.

I recall in the introduction to one of them he explains he wrote these stories for boys. Adventure, danger, fun characters. If you have sons you'll know there is a certain aesthetic young boy love and these books deliver it.

I also was amazed how much I enjoyed his books for adults, like the one about being on a ship as a kid (can't find the name).

If you look into his biography you find some really hard things that I guess he transformed into writing.

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animal_spiritsOct 2024

I love the Count of Monte Cristo. I had adventure and mystery. Also I felt I learned a lot about being a man while reading it, though that might be due to me being 20-21 at the time so I was learning a lot about that anyways. Also I loved listening to the audiobook of Treasure Island :)

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