Life on the Mississippi (1883)

Read this 1883 book for its first part, Twain's account of training as a steamboat pilot under the exacting Horace Bixby. The cub who fills a notebook with river names, only for Bixby to quiz him on points he cannot name, is comedy built on humiliation, and every reader who has started a hard job will recognize it. The later chapters, on a return trip decades on, turn into a looser travelogue with flashes of wit rather than steady laughs. Stop when the fun runs out; nothing is lost.