Jules et Jim, or, Too Much Books Gives the Boy Strange Ideas

[snurri]

I am on a temp assignment where I am able to read, like, 5-6 hours a day. (Yes, it is kind of awesome.) Today I started and finished both Around the World In Eighty Days and The Killer Inside Me.

I can't stop envisioning a mash-up in which Phileas Fogg leaves a trail of bodies behind him for Passepartout to clean up. And I ask you: Aouda/Amy--COINCIDENCE?

Comments

[rudi.livejournal.com]

...and weren't you just reading Journey to the Center of the Earth? You seem to be going on a Verne spree...

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Five-book omnibus edition. My rankings:

1. A Journey to the Center of the Earth: the funniest of the bunch, with the best characters and the wildest "science." A faithful film adaptation would be a laugh riot, and I am not being in the least facetious. With chapter headings like "TERRIBLE SAURIAN BATTLE," it is impossible to go wrong.

2. Around the World In Eighty Days: the best-plotted of the bunch. Some cringe-worthy colonialist commentary, but hardly stands still long enough to be offensive. The characters are not quite as well drawn as in Journey, but Passepartout has some great moments, and Fogg works well after an iffy beginning. Oh, and there's an actual FEMALE character in it, wonder of wonders.

3. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: exciting in parts, but too often a catalog of undersea flora and fauna and/or a menu of meals served on the Nautilus. Nemo's pretty much the only character of any interest here, and he's left an enigma in the end.

4. From the Earth to the Moon: the main virtue of this is that it's short. The mild parody of the Gun Club is amusing, but a little goes a long way, and too much of the book turns out to be caught up in the mathematics and design of the, well, moon-shot.

5. Round the Moon: even more astronomy talk (both elementary and advanced) than in the sequel, but worse because it all takes place between three guys stuck in a bullet. I actually gave up on this one about a third of the way through and skimmed ahead to see if they ever actually landed on the moon. (They didn't.)

[rudi.livejournal.com]

Ah -- that explains everything.

A couple years ago, before an in-car CD player opened up the possibility of books on tape, our long-trip entertainment consisted of me reading things aloud. Journey to the Center of the Earth kind of bogged down a bit in the reading aloud, although I remember that some of the initial descent worked out OK.

Speaking of Nemo, I just ran across this interesting piece on his background: http://yet.typepad.com/round_dice/2006/09/like_many_curre.html#more

Speaking of steampunk, did you catch any of the Secrete Adventure of Jules Verne show that was on SciFi a couple years ago? Didn't always quite work, but had some nice moments along the way.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

Steampunk + Hardboiled is one of the ways to reach Weird-boiled.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I was thinking how weird it is that Verne has retroactively become Steampunk. And I wonder how many Steampunk afficionados have actually read him.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

From what I understand (recent NYT article and Steampunk magazine, etc.) Verne, and Wells, are huge on the fashion side of steampunk. On the fiction side, I think a lot of us read them as kids.

[justinelavaworm.livejournal.com]

You've gone mad. Temp worker induced psychosis. Apparently it happens a lot. You need to read this French book: The Temp. If I weren't really really lazy I'd google it and find the details for you.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm not deranged! I'm just a little mad . . .

Have you seen "Clockwatchers"? I swear that movie was based on assignments I've had.