![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Verne Round-Up
May. 13th, 2008 07:19 amI posted this in a reply to Rudi last night, but it occurs to me that it since this place is low on content lately, I may as well put it here for all y'all to read. My rankings of the five books in my snazzy Jules Verne omnibus, just completed (SPOILER WARNING OMG):
1. A Journey to the Center of the Earth: the funniest of the bunch, with the best characters and the wildest "science." Hans the Icelandic guide = my hero. A faithful film adaptation would be a laugh riot (apparently there is some 3-D monstrosity with Brendan Fraser about to be released), and I don't even mean the suspect (or outright wrong) science. Best chapter heading: "TERRIBLE SAURIAN BATTLE." How can you 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. Some surprisingly effective description; when they were trapped under the icebergs and running out of air, I actually started to feel rather short of breath. Overall, though, it's just a travelogue, with no real payoff or anyone to root for. Ned Land the Canadian is annoying. Nemo's pretty much the only character of any interest here, and he's left an enigma in the end. (More on that here; thanks to Rudi for the link.)
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. The most interesting part of the book for me was wondering how much Verne influenced the naming and siting of the actual American space program nearly a century later.
5. Round the Moon: there's even more astronomy talk (both elementary and advanced) in this sequel, but it's 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.)
1. A Journey to the Center of the Earth: the funniest of the bunch, with the best characters and the wildest "science." Hans the Icelandic guide = my hero. A faithful film adaptation would be a laugh riot (apparently there is some 3-D monstrosity with Brendan Fraser about to be released), and I don't even mean the suspect (or outright wrong) science. Best chapter heading: "TERRIBLE SAURIAN BATTLE." How can you 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. Some surprisingly effective description; when they were trapped under the icebergs and running out of air, I actually started to feel rather short of breath. Overall, though, it's just a travelogue, with no real payoff or anyone to root for. Ned Land the Canadian is annoying. Nemo's pretty much the only character of any interest here, and he's left an enigma in the end. (More on that here; thanks to Rudi for the link.)
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. The most interesting part of the book for me was wondering how much Verne influenced the naming and siting of the actual American space program nearly a century later.
5. Round the Moon: there's even more astronomy talk (both elementary and advanced) in this sequel, but it's 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.)