Name: Kidnapped
ISBN: 9781775414193

Kidnapped

KIDNAPPED is an adventure story that has become the model for any thriller of escape and suspense. Set in 1751, the flight of David Balfour and Alan Breck across the Highlands of Scotland is based on real events. Though he wrote the book to make money, while living as an invalid in Bournemouth. Stevenson was proud of it; he inscribed a presentation copy with the couplet. Here is the one sound page of all my writing. The one I'm proud of and that I delight in. Rowland Hilder is famous for his paintings of the English countryside but his work in book illustration covered a much wider canvas. His drawing for KIDNAPPED were first published in 1930 and have undeservedly, been long out of print. A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.

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gaddersDec 2024

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

All of the CJ Box series of Joe Pickett books

The Dan Abnett Eisenhorn and Ravenor Warhammer novels

In case you can't tell, I mostly read for entertainment.

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gaddersOct 2024

I recently read the unabridged version, and really enjoyed it. The pacing is a bit patchy, but has (what we would think) surprisingly modern things mentioned - cannabis, lesbianism.

If anyone wants a recommendation for another good book from around the same date, I recommend Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has it's adventure aspects, but is also just a great tale of male friendship between two different characters.

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rmkJul 2022

A lot. If you read a lot of nonfiction and are looking to ease into fiction, here are a few suggestions:

- Read historical fiction, or fiction that is extremely well-researched. I like James Michener.

- Read travel and adventure type stories. Personal favorites in this category are The Treasure Island by R L Stevenson, and The Coral Island by R M Ballantyne. Both are not particularly long, and the original is still suprisingly readable in this day and age. Bonus: these are extremely well-regarded classics. I personally find Ballantyne's usage of the English language very pleasant and enjoyable. Stevenson's writing in another classic, Kidnapped, will leave you feeling as if you have lived all your life in Scotland.

- If you want to read something very serious, then perhaps 1984 may be a good choice in our troubled times of persistent surveillance and abuse of language for nefarious ends.

- If you want something light, then go no further than P G Wodehouse: there are many fine books to read by this author, such as the excellent Right Ho, Jeeves, Service With a Smile, or Galahad at Blandings. You couldn't go very wrong with Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, or Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith.

- If you want something that is easy to read, but still profound, try Ernest Hemingway. I recommend A Farewell to Arms, or The Old Man and The Sea. This counts as serious literature, so just steer clear of this if you don't want to read "Literature".

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noufalibrahimApr 2018

My daughter, who is 9 now, adores anything by Roald Dahl. I've read most of the famous ones to her. It's super fun when you try to read his nonsense words. Always a laugh. I'm trying to go towards abridged classics. I've read most of Jules Verne to her and some Stevenson (Kidnapped was one of her favourites). She also enjoyed the Milnes original Winne the Pooh (I'll never forgive Disney for destroying it), Gaiman's Coraline and Fortunately the milk. The classics like E.B. Whites Charlottes Web and Stuart Little were fun too. We also went through a childrens adaptation of the Arabian Nights hauntingly illustrated by Victor Ambrus. I heard that the Woz used to read Tom Swift Jr. books to his kids so I read one of those to my daughter. It felt a little cheesy and dated (eg. Asian people were called Orientals) but she enjoyed it. I also read The Water Babies (by Rev. Charles Kingley) to her. It was a weird book but she seemed to enjoy it. The only one she asked me to stop reading to her was "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton. The only thing where she preferred the animation over the book. Right now, we're reading Swallows and Amazons.

She also enjoys reading a lot by herself. Her latest craze was Astrid Lingdren and right now, she's reading Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH.

My son, who's 5 now and can't read fluently yet, enjoys graphic novels. I read at lot of simple "Thomas the Tank engine" stories to him. He also enjoys the "From the black lagoon" series of books as well as stuff from Dr. Seuss and other kids books like the Gruffalo series. One of his favourites are the books by Quentin Blake (Mrs. Armitage, Patrick, Angelo etc.). Interestingly, I read Kidnapped to my daughter while he (unknowingly) listened on and later he was able to recount some of the important scenes in the book quite well. He knew about Alan Breck and how he fought in the ship and what not. That was a bit of a wow moment for me.

I also love reading poetry to them. Even singing it if I can. The Random House book of poetry for children edited by Jack Prelutsky. Both of them love it and enjoy reciting stuff by themselves. They even have a few "favourite poems".

I think one of the responsibilities of a parent, especially in the younger years, is to curate the world that reaches their children. You have to expose them to the best of humanity so that they grow up that way and when they encounter the failings, they'll know how belong human potential it is. The humanities are a wonderful way of doing this and I emphasise them a lot more in my household than the sciences.

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dmlorenzettiDec 2012

Somebody posted "100 greatest books of all time" to HN just a day or two ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_Best_Books_of_All_Time

From that list I would personally recommend a number of titles, but I would also run away screaming from a few. Can you give more information about what interests you? For example, with Kafka, are you reading the shorter stuff, or "The Trial"? Do you like it or not? What are you looking for?

By the way, if you find something on there you like, then go give an upvote to ekm2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4955541

From that list, I would recommend the following to anybody: (Achebe - Things Fall Apart), (Austin - Pride and Prejudice), (Laxness - Independent People), (Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera), (Gogol - Dead Souls [translation by MacAndrew is the most fun one I've read]), (Twain - Huck Finn).

From that list, I would recommend the following only if I knew the person's tastes better: (Cervantes - Don Quixote), (Dostoevsky - The Idiot), (Kafka - The Trial), (Orwell - 1984), (Rushdie - Midnight's Children)

There are many other books I love that aren't on that list, but whether they would float your boat is anybody's guess. Personally I would read a shopping list written by Per Olov Enquist, but he seems to be an acquired taste, because nobody else I know digs him as much as I do (and only his "Royal Physician's Visit" seems likely to achieve "classic" status).

If you only know "The Three Musketeers" (Dumas) from movies, then you don't know them at all; the book is, for me, central to the idea of reading. If you liked "The Three Musketeers" then you might also like "Kidnapped" (Stevenson) and "Watership Down" (Adams)-- although probably few would consider that a classic.

"Catch-22" (Heller), "Mother Night" and "Slaughterhouse Five" (Vonnegut), and "The Little Prince" (Exupery) are all "classic" books I've read many times over. I was not a huge fan of "Les Miserables" (Hugo) before I read it out loud with my wife about a year ago, and it really grew on me then. To Orwell's "1984" I would add "Animal Farm". "My Antonia" (Cather) has something great in it, though many probably would consider it slow. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee) deserves a call-out on any list of classics, especially if you're American. If you like Mark Twain, and want to read something really different by him, then have a look at "Joan of Arc."

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tialaramexApr 2026

> we want there to be a threshold, because we don't want people (or AI) to ignore obvious emergencies

There's an SF short I can't find right now which begins with somebody failing to return their copy of "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson, this gets handed over to some authority which could presumably fine you for overdue books and somehow a machine ends up concluding they've kidnapped someone named "Robert Louis Stevenson" who, it discovers, is in fact dead, therefore it's no longer kidnap it's a murder, and that's a capital offence.

The library member is executed before humans get around to solving the problem, and ironically that's probably the most unrealistic part of the story because the US is famously awful at speedy anything when it comes to justice, ten years rotting in solitary confinement for a non-existent crime is very believable today whereas "Executed in a month" sounds like a fantasy of efficiency.

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