Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2006), Hardcover
Description
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists introduced us to the Pirate Captain, his luxuriant beard and his motley crew (including the Albino Pirate, the Pirate with Rickets and the Pirate with a wooden leg - as well as Jennifer, a girl). Since then they have had an adventure with Captain Ahab and an elusive white whale, and gained a cult following in the US and the UK. Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Ardal O'Hanlon and Chris Addison are just some of the fans of the series. And now, the extravagantly-bearded captain and his followers embark on a new adventure, in which they encounter Karl Marx and cancan dancers, valkyries and volcanoes, and try to discover whether ham really could be the opium of the people.
User reviews
LibraryThing member MikeFarquhar
After the last couple of reads, I needed something a bit lighter, so the next Pirates! book - The Pirates! In An Adventure With Communists by Gideon Defoe came along at just the right time.
Superbly silly piratical adventures set in Victorian England, this one has the Pirate Captain and his crew
Superbly silly piratical adventures set in Victorian England, this one has the Pirate Captain and his crew
Show More
tied up with Karl Marx and a nefarious plan involving valkyries and volcanoes. Not high literature, but it will make you smile. Well, it made ME smile. Short enough that Defoe really has no excuse for not popping these out more often. Show Less
LibraryThing member prebs99
Any book that can include pirates, Karl Marx and Nietzsche and also be funny has to be a great book. These Pirate books are a guilty pleasure for me and I manage to laugh out loud reading them. The reason I can't give more that 4 stars is that the book is silly and silliness should not be
Show More
encouraged. Show Less
LibraryThing member littlegeek
The Pirates! books make me giggle like a little child.
LibraryThing member pratchettfan
A lightweight read with lots of funny scenarios and dozens of anachronisms.
LibraryThing member woodge
A coupla years ago I read Defoe's first two adventures featuring the Pirates: The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists and The Pirates! In An Adventure with Ahab. I'm a big fan of this kind of silly, absurdist humor and Gideon Defoe has a deft hand at it. I kept giggling along with this tale
Show More
too. (It's undoubtedly the funniest book I've read all year.) The pirates don't even get names either. There's the Pirate Captain (who is always dreaming of a fine glazed ham); his second in command, the Pirate with a Scarf; and also the Pirate with a Nut Allergy to name a few. (There's also Jennifer.) And I also enjoy the chapter names which have absolutely nothing to do with the events transpiring within their respective chapters. One that comes to mind is: I Saw Sea Cucumbers Eat Jenkins! Good stuff. Show Less
LibraryThing member PirateJenny
Mistaken for Karl Marx because of his luxurious beard, the Pirate Captain is imprisoned. When Engels points this mistake out to the police, the Captain is released and agrees to take Marx and Engels to France (a suspiciously long trip). Marx is not exactly the best shipmate. He feels rather
Show More
entitled to everything. Once in France, there seem to be suspicious plots involving the Communnists. Wagner is also quite popular. But chances are the Pirate Captain, with the help of the pirate with a scarf and Jennifer, will sort things out. Show Less
LibraryThing member Pferdina
As usual, my husband laughed all the way through the book.
LibraryThing member Alliebadger
So much fun. I absolutely love The Pirates! series and all the adventures they have. Each one is a quick and easy read filled with the silliest of humor combined with some very astute satire, for those who can catch it. The best way for me to describe is to tell you to look among the very first
Show More
pages before the book even starts at the maze to find the Pirate Captain's prize ham hidden in the silky folds of Karl Marx's beard (while, of course, watching out for obstacles along the way such as "profiteering plutocrats" and "girls"). Enjoy. Show Less
LibraryThing member clfisha
A silly, hilarious, crazy, rip roaring pirate adventure.
Aaaarrr this book is funny. If you like pirates (who doesn't?), jokes about philosophers, irrelevant witty footnotes and dastardly plots involving suspicious bakeries and opera then buy this book. Otherwise you might just find it all too silly
Aaaarrr this book is funny. If you like pirates (who doesn't?), jokes about philosophers, irrelevant witty footnotes and dastardly plots involving suspicious bakeries and opera then buy this book. Otherwise you might just find it all too silly
Show More
and annoying. Personally I am going to track down the rest of their adventures (what will they make of Darwin?). Show Less
LibraryThing member Nodosaurus
For the first portion of this book, it felt like a rehash of old jokes from the previous novels. However, once the Pirate Captain gets entwined with Karl Marx, the book really picked up.
In this adventure, the pirates explore London and Paris in disguise and the Pirate Captain gets an opportunity to
All jolly fun, but someone is trying to sabotage Marx's reputation and discredit him. So the adventure takes a turn.
This is a great adventure and a quick read.
In this adventure, the pirates explore London and Paris in disguise and the Pirate Captain gets an opportunity to
Show More
show his expertise in the French language. The Pirate Captain manages to land an endorsement from Perkin's Gentlemen's Pomade which provides him with ample supplies of the pomade. The book explores pirate philosophies as Karl Marx and the Pirate Captain get involved in a philosophical competition, and the captain gets to share his wit with the elite Frenchmen. All jolly fun, but someone is trying to sabotage Marx's reputation and discredit him. So the adventure takes a turn.
This is a great adventure and a quick read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tulikangaroo
This should be called "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Philosophers", because though Marx is excellent, it's really Nietzsche as a tin-superman-phantom-of-the-opera/weakling-philosopher-wanna-be that is the book's coup de gras. Brilliant. Hilarious. Ridiculous.
LibraryThing member elliepotten
Oh, how I loved this book! I heard Chris Addison talking about the series on My Life in Books, and the extract he read out had me (and him!) in stitches, so when I saw this one at the library I snapped it up. It's actually the third book in the series, but it didn't matter in the slightest that I
It's a hilarious, lively, tongue-in-cheek and completely addictive little book in which the Pirate Captain (Terror of the High Seas), his number two (the pirate with a scarf) and his motley band of rogues team up with Marx and Engels to find out who is attempting to discredit the communist movement across Europe. It's a real romp - but if you want to find out how statuesque blonde ladies, opera, French schoolchildren, waxworks, bears and a volcano fit into the story... well, you'll just have to read it for yourself!
The humour is sly, ridiculous and occasionally a little bit naughty, and with the genuinely informative but pithy footnotes scattered through the pages, I can see why previous reviewers have often drawn comparisons with Terry Pratchett. A set of these books would make a great gift idea I think, whether the recipient is a keen reader or not, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the rest of the series for more chaos and chuckles in the near future!
Show More
didn't start with An Adventure with Scientists. It's still brilliant!It's a hilarious, lively, tongue-in-cheek and completely addictive little book in which the Pirate Captain (Terror of the High Seas), his number two (the pirate with a scarf) and his motley band of rogues team up with Marx and Engels to find out who is attempting to discredit the communist movement across Europe. It's a real romp - but if you want to find out how statuesque blonde ladies, opera, French schoolchildren, waxworks, bears and a volcano fit into the story... well, you'll just have to read it for yourself!
The humour is sly, ridiculous and occasionally a little bit naughty, and with the genuinely informative but pithy footnotes scattered through the pages, I can see why previous reviewers have often drawn comparisons with Terry Pratchett. A set of these books would make a great gift idea I think, whether the recipient is a keen reader or not, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the rest of the series for more chaos and chuckles in the near future!
Show Less
LibraryThing member readingwithtea
“The Crustacean Carnival of Fear”
The Pirate Captain, fresh from an adventure battling Black Bellamy, takes his crew ashore in London, where he is mistaken for Karl Marx, on account of his enormous flowing beard, and arrested. Friedrich Engels comes to his rescue on the condition that the Pirate
I can’t decide whether this is a children’s book or not. On the one hand, the tone seems very much intended for children, and there are basic explanations of historical events/cultural points which appear pitched at an 8-10-year-old level; on the other hand, there are sly cultural references which would go sailing over kids’ heads and are, I suspect, included for the benefit of the weary adult reading the book with a child. I gave up on it after 78 pages not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because it was just too basic and I lost some patience.
The pirates are whimsically characterized (“the pirate in green”, “the pirate with long legs”, “the albino pirate”, “the pirate with a scarf”) and the Pirate Captain is fun; proud and charismatic, a bit of a show-off. Jennifer proves to be somewhat of a Hermionic (can I claim creation of that word?) character in that she seems to be there to push the Pirate Captain back into line so that he can stay boisterously in character but still progress the plot, but she’s likeable enough.
Defoe writes London cleverly with amusing suggestions (a monkey turns thattriangular sign outside Scotland Yard?) and there are some sparky comments on celebrity, boring speeches and various other themes generally missing from children’s books.
The Pirate Captain, fresh from an adventure battling Black Bellamy, takes his crew ashore in London, where he is mistaken for Karl Marx, on account of his enormous flowing beard, and arrested. Friedrich Engels comes to his rescue on the condition that the Pirate
Show More
Captain takes up his business proposition…I can’t decide whether this is a children’s book or not. On the one hand, the tone seems very much intended for children, and there are basic explanations of historical events/cultural points which appear pitched at an 8-10-year-old level; on the other hand, there are sly cultural references which would go sailing over kids’ heads and are, I suspect, included for the benefit of the weary adult reading the book with a child. I gave up on it after 78 pages not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because it was just too basic and I lost some patience.
The pirates are whimsically characterized (“the pirate in green”, “the pirate with long legs”, “the albino pirate”, “the pirate with a scarf”) and the Pirate Captain is fun; proud and charismatic, a bit of a show-off. Jennifer proves to be somewhat of a Hermionic (can I claim creation of that word?) character in that she seems to be there to push the Pirate Captain back into line so that he can stay boisterously in character but still progress the plot, but she’s likeable enough.
Defoe writes London cleverly with amusing suggestions (a monkey turns thattriangular sign outside Scotland Yard?) and there are some sparky comments on celebrity, boring speeches and various other themes generally missing from children’s books.
Show Less
LibraryThing member charlottejones952
This is the third installment in the Pirates! series and although I really enjoyed the first and second, I can't really say the same for this one. The plot takes place in the year 1840 and follows the usual group of pirates on their adventures. In this one they meet Karl Marx and are on a mission
The main problem with this novel, I find, is the plot and the pacing. Not a lot happens until about half way through and the beginning drags a lot so overall it was a much slower read than the previous two books. The end was exciting and action-packed but I feel that it ended too suddenly.
The characters were consistent with the other two books and were funny as always. I think the character of the Pirate Captain was developed well throughout the book and some of the other pirates were developed further.
Overall, I feel that The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists was not as good as the previous books in the series but I still enjoyed it. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.
Show More
to discover why everyone is against the Communist movement. The main problem with this novel, I find, is the plot and the pacing. Not a lot happens until about half way through and the beginning drags a lot so overall it was a much slower read than the previous two books. The end was exciting and action-packed but I feel that it ended too suddenly.
The characters were consistent with the other two books and were funny as always. I think the character of the Pirate Captain was developed well throughout the book and some of the other pirates were developed further.
Overall, I feel that The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists was not as good as the previous books in the series but I still enjoyed it. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bragan
This is the third of the Pirates! books, a series of silly little stories about pirates who have adventures with various real and fictional famous 19th century figures. Actually, "silly" doesn't really do these justice. They're ridiculous and absurd, a kind of humor that, now that I think about it,
In this one, the pirates get tangled up with communists (as you could probably guess). It starts when the Pirate Captain gets mistaken for Karl Marx because of his amazing beard, propelling them into an adventure that features philosophy, opera, and art theft, among other interesting elements.
I've enjoyed all of these books so far, in their own bizarre ways, but I do think I liked this one more than the last one, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Ahab. I think maybe it's because the humorous situations feel a little less random and a little more in service of... Well, look, I hesitate to call it a plot, but I'm not sure what else to call it, so let's say in service of a plot. No matter how thin or how crazy it might be.
Show More
feels more than a little Monty Python-esque. And, as with Monty Python, I often find myself a bit confused about why I'm laughing at this nonsense, but happily laughing at it, anyway.In this one, the pirates get tangled up with communists (as you could probably guess). It starts when the Pirate Captain gets mistaken for Karl Marx because of his amazing beard, propelling them into an adventure that features philosophy, opera, and art theft, among other interesting elements.
I've enjoyed all of these books so far, in their own bizarre ways, but I do think I liked this one more than the last one, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Ahab. I think maybe it's because the humorous situations feel a little less random and a little more in service of... Well, look, I hesitate to call it a plot, but I'm not sure what else to call it, so let's say in service of a plot. No matter how thin or how crazy it might be.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2006-09-14
Physical description
160 p.; 6.54 inches
ISBN
0297848674 / 9780297848677