Ye would think a pirate's favourite restaurant would be "Arrrby's"... but actually it's Long John Silver's

"Crap, is it the 15th? I've got that thing, right? You know, that book-club thing... What do you mean 'what book-club thing?' - that thing online that I agreed to be a part of, with Alex and Tyler and... what? Oh, Treasure Island. Yeah that one about the treasure... and the island. Geez...
I hafta write a review or response kinda thingie... I dunno, not too long. Why? Crap, how much? We have to read that for when? HOW MANY PAGES?!
Oh... well shiver me timbers..."

That's my inner dialogue.

Let it be known that my instructors decided to be gentle this semester and spare us the gratuitous violence of essay and research paper writing... by having us read half the bloody textbooks - overnight.
With that being said, I did, in fact, manage to read more than half of Treasure Island before this week got started, and thus - I AM prepared for this review, albeit only mildly. Two weeks from now will be a different story (but not a different tale, aha!)

After reading Tyler's review I have to agree with some points. Chiefly, while reading I was struck with the same sense of familiarity with the book, although I too have never read it. Maybe that's because the book is pretty formula. Being that it is rather old, I cannot call it cliche - it probably invented the genre of adventure fiction, or at least contributed vastly to the cannon.
It is an exciting read. My edition even mentions on the back that this will be a tale enjoyed by boys and old men alike (apparently it was published before women acquired the ability to read... yikes).
Of course the astute reader will almost instantly recognize Long John Silver as the "one-legged-man" that the Captain was all on about, and despite Jim's (and the author's) attempts to convince the reader otherwise, the suspense of double-crossing Silver has the wind taken from its sails, so-to-speak. So the reader is just left waiting for everyone to catch up to his or her own detective work.

I'm not sure how much I can really say about this book. It's not a hard read, and the characters are ... well, easy to read.
The "good guys" are pretty bland - stoic, righteous, and pious - while the "bad guys" are mostly idiots and drunks, with the notable exception of Silver himself. Long John Silver is easily the most nuanced character of the book (so far, but I don't expect anyone to surpass him). He is more an agent of chaos than a stereotypical pirate; to wit: instead of enjoying the same kind of reputation as the late Captain Flint, Silver employs subterfuge to gain leverage. He may very well take on honest work between pirate-outings just to keep up the personage of an trustworthy man, although I don't think that is ever explored. He also doesn't spend his fortunes the way several of the other mentioned notorious pirates do, but saves it up and gives it to his wife (HIS WIFE!) for safe keeping (clearly they didn't have shopping malls back then... )
In a lot of ways, Silver is much more of a modern pirate than a "ye olde fashioned" one - these days he'd be running an insurance corporation, screwing little old ladies out of health coverage... But I digress.

One thing I want to quickly mention, because Tyler brought it up, is that given our contemporary understanding of the stereotypical Caribbean style pirate, they didn't talk in the "yarr" kind of way, but spoke plain English-sounding English... They were English after all...
So the way the "good guys", who are (of course) vastly more educated... although - come to think of it, where the hell did Jim Hawkins learn to be a proper little gentleman? His parents owned a hotel... - the way they talk is much more 'civilized' without the "mateys" and "avasts".

By the way... if you want a book that's impossible to read without an accent, I suggest we tackle Trainspotting by Irving Welsh. It's written in the Scottish brogue, and its almost impossible to read quietly. I have to read it out loud.

Back to Silver. He's much more realistic of a character than any of them - the plucky young hero, the God-fearing Captain, the civilized and repentant maroon-ee Gunn, or any of the binging cirrhotic-riddled pirates. He has depth; something that this book, unfortunately, lacks.
I skipped ahead to the back of my edition because it has an Afterword critiquing the book and the author of that piece (a Mr. G.S. Fraser) agrees that what the book lacks in "maturity" it makes up for in storytelling.
Effectively, it's a comic book without pictures - the counterpart to a graphic novel. Not to say that I don't like it - I do - but it's not challenging.

With that I'll conclude by saying only, remember all that reading I have to do for school? It's kind of nice to not have to think too deeply about what I'm reading. Treasure Island fits the bill.