If you live anywhere near the Missouri/Mississippi River,
you have to read the Mark Twain classic. I had only put it off for 36 years.
I suppose I thought it would be heavy and possibly a bit dry for a female not
in the least interested in steamboats. I was wrong. Even the minutia of how to
navigate a steamboat down the river, in Twain’s hands, is light, funny,
informative and woven with the most enchanting local stories. Colorful
characters come and go; riverside towns sleep, then rouse to sounds of the
riverboat, then sleep again. The river is forever changing itself and 21 years
after Twain quits being a steamboat captain and comes back as a passenger, the
river has become unrecognizable to him. Even the types of people he was used to seeing on the river, are no longer part of the scene.
It’s the early 1800’s and Twain describes that world in
vivid color, but the reader also begins to realize, that it’s life as we know
it, too; humans are humans and change is both embraced and lamented. 
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