Knocking the Neighbors

Ade, George, 1866-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 139K words
Chapters: 14

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Knocking the Neighbors by George AdeAuthor: Ade, George, 1866-1944,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 16, 2006

Editor's review

Knocking the Neighbors is a work by the American writer George Ade, released free of charge as an English ebook by Project Gutenberg. Ade is known for his humor and satire, and he excelled at drawing laughter and observations on human nature from everyday neighborhood relations and ordinary city life. This book continues his light, playful narrative style, teasing the people around him to reflect the vanity, one-upmanship, and goodwill of ordinary folk, making for an amusing read. As a public-domain ebook, it is short, and its language bears the mark of early twentieth-century American English, making it a good introductory read for understanding American popular humor. Reading it lets you appreciate the author's wit while also seeing today's social mores through the lens of life a century ago. Because it is a free electronic edition, it is easy to obtain, suitable for reading in spare moments and picking up and putting down at will, and also suitable as extensive English reading material for building cultural background knowledge in a relaxed atmosphere.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy American humor and satirical short pieces and want to experience human nature and social manners through light reading.
Learners of English doing extensive reading who want to build reading experience with a public-domain work of moderate length.
Readers interested in early twentieth-century American social life and popular literature.
Readers who want something light to read on the commute or before bed and are not looking for grand narratives.

Not a good fit for

Academic readers expecting systematic literary history research or in-depth textual analysis.
Beginners with weak English who find it hard to adapt to English usage from a century ago.
Readers who prefer long continuous plots or serious themes, who may find the content scattered and shallow.

Reading tips

Read one or two pieces first to get a feel for the style, then skip around according to interest; there is no need to read from beginning to end.
When you encounter period slang or cultural references, note them for now and look back after finishing the chapter, avoiding frequent interruptions.
As extensive English reading material, read a short section each day and retell the main idea aloud to reinforce comprehension.
You can read alongside background material on American society of the same period to appreciate the real-world targets of the satire.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly?

It is not really recommended for readers starting from zero. The language has features of early twentieth-century American English, with many slang and colloquial expressions, which can easily stump beginners. If you already have some vocabulary and reading habits, you can use it as extensive reading material and progress gradually; otherwise, it is better to start with contemporary simplified readers.

What should I keep in mind when using the Gutenberg edition ebook?

Project Gutenberg provides free public-domain electronic texts, usually in plain text or various electronic formats, with layout focused on text and lacking the annotations and introductions of modern editions. When reading, you need to adapt to the paragraphing and punctuation conventions yourself and can use dictionary tools for unfamiliar words; do not expect a carefully annotated edition.

What can I get from reading this book?

The main rewards are a light, humorous reading experience and observations on human nature and social manners. The author writes about neighborhood trivia in a teasing style, letting readers experience universal human traits such as vanity, one-upmanship, and goodwill amid the laughter, while also encountering ways of expression in American popular literature; it is a light entry point for understanding the social landscape of that time.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Ade, George, 1866-1944 Author

George Ade (1866–1944) was an American writer known for humorous and satirical short pieces. His works include People You Know, Ade's Fables, More Fables, Fables in Slang, The Slim Princess, Knocking the Neighbors, and In Pastures New. He excelled at slang fables and urban sketches that portray the vanity and calculation of ordinary people, with playful language and brisk pacing, often using small characters' stories to reflect social manners. Fables in Slang, with its colloquial fables satirizing social life, is representative of his light but pointed style. Public information on his nationality, biographical details, and education is limited, so this note avoids speculation. The library holds eight of his works, indicating some presence of his humorous short fiction in Chinese-language book materials.