Island of Sheep (Wordsworth Classics) [Paperback]

John Buchan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wordsworth Classics | Publication Date: April 1, 1995

In this, his final adventure, Buchan's hero Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in one of the most hazardous escapades of his life. Two men are honour bound to help the tormented Valdemar Haraldsen, and a third decides to mastermind the whole affair out of a sheer love of adventure and a dislike of villains.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Buchan was a major influence on my work' --Alfred Hitchcock --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

John Buchan was a Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet and novelist. He published nearly 30 novels and seven collections of short stories. He was born in Perth, an eldest son, and studied at Glasgow and Oxford. In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor and they subsequently had four children. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd George's Director of Information and Conservative MP, Buchan moved to Canada in 1935. He served as Governor General there until his death in 1940. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (April 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1853262765
• ISBN-13: 978-1853262760
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,157,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book, Bad Scanning errors, February 9, 2007

By 

Timothy McGrew "Philosopher" (Kalamazoo, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Island of Sheep (Paperback)

The three stars in my review are for *this edition* of the book. The book itself is great. If you love the Sherlock Holmes stories or books by Rider Haggard, you will love this book. Buchan tells a good tale, keeps the pace moving, and has a real love of place. His characters are not deep, but several of them are very likable, and you will care what happens to them. If you've been bored re-reading the same old books and you like adventure, by all means, get this book.

But not this edition. This Elibron books edition is *so badly done* that the authors should be tarred and feathered. It has been scanned in and then simply published as such. Totally cheap, with no human checking for scanning errors. They are egregious and distracting. The worst of all is the repeated phrase "the bland of Sheep" for "the Island of Sheep"--that being the title of the book! But there are many others, and sometimes they are so bad that you can't figure out what the original word was supposed to be. This makes it hard to sink into the story and lose yourself, as you're constantly being brought up short to ask yourself, "Is that a real word, or is it a scan-o?" The problem is made worse by two things: First, Buchan really does use an unusual vocabulary, including terms from hound tracking, Nordic words, terms from falconry and duck-hunting, and the like. So there are genuine additions to your vocabulary waiting here, and that makes it harder to pick out the scan-o's. Second, the scanning software they used apparently was linked to a dictionary and always fills in a real word instead of nonsense, where often if it just filled in nonsense, the original word would be easier to de-code. Example--it used "all" for "till" in one case. That took me a while of puzzling, and something like "tlll" would have been easier to figure out. "The" comes out as "me" several times. One of the funniest is "domes" for "clothes," which is repeated every time the word "clothes" should appear.

Buy this book, but buy it used and in some other edition. The editors at Elibron should be scolded and shouldn't sell another book until they can do some actual work to publish their books instead of scanning and selling without editing.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is a Good One!, January 28, 2008

By 

Prabal Guha Biswas "hmmm" (don't worry, I shall find you) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Island of Sheep (Paperback)

I'm bit surprised that Buchan's Greenmantle seems to be more popular than this little gem. I put this book as a better read than 39 steps and Greenmantle, while the latter was a study in jingoism, advertising imperialism to all and sundry and dismissive of those of us with more melanin as savages, the former is dished with a plot that is quite unbelievable and over the top, really! This one, though peppered with lots of "Scots are great" and Scotland "a paradise on earth" and full of "burrrns" and glens is still a fast-track novel quite reminiscent of Don Brown's of our times. A good time pass and an interesting plot keep your interest till the "lived happily ever after" climax

PS:
Somehow I have a feeling that the writer wanted to take the story to China and maybe because of lack of time or dearth of requisite material he had to end the tale in "Norlands". Alas, who will know, he has been dead nearly 70 years!