Readable, engrossing, sometimes amusing - a classic read. ( )

Johnson's journal needs no comment or critique. All the man's writings are justly classic, even those that are sorely dated. Boswell's journal, of course, is chiefly of interest as it captures Johnson. The great biographer is sometimes tempted to digress, but all in all the Journal makes an essential adjunct to The Life. ( )

I read this as part of pre-trip anticipation for a similar trip, and it was interesting to compare it with my own impressions of the highlands and islands. My overall rating of four stars is a split-vote, though. Samuel Johnson's prose reveals a scintillating intellect and original observer. Even when he is wrong, sometimes pig-headedly so, as when he insists that Gaelic (he calls it Erse) was in Scotland a purely oral language until shortly before his own time, he is interesting to read. He shares with Mark Twain an ability to build an argument throughout a long paragraph and then surprise and delight the reader at the very last with the way he turns it.
Boswell's prose on the other hand made me picture him as a status-conscious, obsequious, hypocritical prig. I wondered throughout if Jane Austen used it as a model for the speech of Mr Collins, the stuffy vicar in the employ of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Where Boswell records the same incidents as Johnson, one is struck by how well Johnson is able to select what to record. Yet I stuck with Boswell to the end because of what he records of Johnson's table talk, and this was rewarding. Highly recommended, particularly Johnson's part. ( )

Marvelous preface by Chapman.

I give it five stars because it is a beautiful book written by a couple of interesting people and gives excellent accounts of places I've never been. Learning new things always makes me happy. ( )