First off, let me say up front that I understand Huck Finn's importance in the history of literature, and respect it as the achievement it is. Written in 1885, it was a "novel" in the modern (21st Century) sense of the word. It dealt with themes of coming of age, understaning morality, and coming to terms with slavery in America, a mere 20 years after slavery had ended; many, if not most people who read Huck Finn when it first came out had lived through the Civil War, and so the story was relatable on a very human level.
That being said, I didn't really like it. For all of its merits, it is on some level, the story of a redneck boy, an unfair racial stereotype and a couple con men. The con men subplot is resolved off the page, and there are significant portions of the book when I had no idea where Jim had gone. There were other parts that weren't clearly written, and I had no idea what was going on. Other parts tended to drag. The closer I got to the end, the more effort it took to finish it.
In the end, I'm glad I finally read it. If you are in high school now and reading this blog, I urge you to read it now. Get it over with. It's not that great, even though it is a classic.
UPDATE/December 23, 2010, 3:30 pm: I haven't decided what I will be reading next. Probably Iain Banks' Transition, but I haven't made a final decision yet.
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