I read this aloud to my son. The whole thing. But I always skipped the "n" word. ( )

The Library of America volume is worth getting for the sake of LoA completeness, but for actual reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are better read in the Norton Critical Editions for the sake of the supplementary material – and ditto, almost certainly, for Puddn'head Wilson in the Norton Critical, though I've read Puddn'head Wilson only in the LoA.

My overall rating for the LoA volume, 3½***, is rather low for an LoA. This is motivated by the preferable use of Norton Critical Editions, in which all but Life on the Mississippi are available. And note that the NCE of Puddn'head Wilson also includes its predecessor inspiration Those Extraordinary Twins.

Tom Sawyer and, most importantly, Huckleberry Finn are of course 5***** American classics. Life on the Mississippi, however, loses its charm once Twain's youthful river pilotage has ended and the book has turned into a rather mundane travelogue. Puddn'head Wilson I have mixed feelings about (on a first reading it seems really questionable racially), but it's certainly not up to the level of Twain's historical "romances" – The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee, and Joan of Arc, though it is superior to such a triviality as Tom Sawyer, Detective.

Yes, yes, I know, Puddn'head Wilson is racial satire, but somehow I feel edgy about it. The two look-alike master/slave infants are just a little too patronizing for my taste and certainly not up to the level of HF's Jim. ( )

Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer 4*
Life on the Mississippi 3* ( )

Any volume that contains "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" gets five stars in my book. George W. Bush could write the second volume of his memoirs and get 5 stars from me if he included "Tom Sawyer." ( )

Rereading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (written 1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (written 1876-1885) as an adult reminds me just why I love Huckleberry Finn so much more. Tom Sawyer is a book I have always had fond memories of because of the clever adventures, the old American frontier setting on the near-to-me Mississippi River, and the creative personality of the rascal Tom Sawyer himself. But the satiric look at society in the companion novel, Huckleberry Finn, and the depth of inner conflict that Huck struggles with in that novel makes it a far more satisfying read as a whole.

Much less well-known is Mark Twain’s tale of Pudd’nhead Wilson (published in 1894), which I’d never read before I found it in my volume of Twain’s Mississippi writings (published by Library of America). Pudd’nhead Wilson felt inferior in terms of development and organization. Had Twain access to a computer for some editing, he could have produced another masterpiece. There are inconsistencies in the characters, and the focus is not cohesive. Yet, as another account of a small, pre-Civil War, Southern town, Twain produced yet another amusing satire of race relations.

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