Writings of Jules Verne

[Earniel]

The Mysterious island was great, I remember reading one chapter a night (when I was supposed to sleep so it had to be done sneakily) when I was young. It was very exciting. And with a nice tie-in to another book at the end.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

The Mysterious island was great, I remember reading one chapter a night (when I was supposed to sleep so it had to be done sneakily) when I was young. It was very exciting. And with a nice tie-in to another book at the end.

Oh, I'm an expert at that. REading sneakily, that is. Those are the nights where I finish an entire novel in one night. Which is quite frequent, btw. My record for a novel was a relatively short one, and it took me an hour and a half.

[Curubethion]

Jules Verne is a classic author...unfortunately he can tend to get a little dry here and there...but he's still really good. Mysterious Island was really interesting, the way it shone light on Nemo.

[Bombadillo]

I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but most of the time I was anxious for him to clearly state what the plot was. I didn't notice any conflict in it. It seemed like 95% of the book was about the speaker hanging out in Nemo's sub. And then when it ended suddenly, and accidentally it seemed like, I was furious that I had wasted my time and wondered what made this a literary classic. Now, I think that was probably rash; it's just a different sort of story than I was used to. But since then I haven't gotten around to reading any of his others. Is Around the World in 80 Days very different? ie less dry?

[tolkienfan]

I don't think Around the World in 80 Days is very dry. The movie wasn't very good though.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by trolls' bane

Oh, I'm an expert at that. REading sneakily, that is. Those are the nights where I finish an entire novel in one night. Which is quite frequent, btw. My record for a novel was a relatively short one, and it took me an hour and a half.

I seldom finished books in one go, wanted to savour them as long as possible. Plus my room was next to my parents and connected through a glasshouse room. They could see my light through my curtains, so I couldn't read too long at night. (Not to mention school started early, yawn.)

Originally Posted by Bombadillo

Is Around the World in 80 Days very different? ie less dry?

I wouldn't say it was dry, there are some exiting moments, but overall I thought it was a tad dull. It is not my favourite of Verne's writings, actually, I enjoyed 20 000 Leagues a lot more. Even if -at the time of reading- I barely understood anything from Nemo's story. I lacked the historical background info.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by Bombadillo

I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but most of the time I was anxious for him to clearly state what the plot was. I didn't notice any conflict in it. It seemed like 95% of the book was about the speaker hanging out in Nemo's sub. And then when it ended suddenly, and accidentally it seemed like, I was furious that I had wasted my time and wondered what made this a literary classic. Now, I think that was probably rash; it's just a different sort of story than I was used to. But since then I haven't gotten around to reading any of his others. Is Around the World in 80 Days very different? ie less dry?

I found it a great book! Well, I must admit that I think Verne spent too much time showing off his knowlege of fish.

[Curubethion]

You also might have gotten a bad translation of it. There are a few of those.

[TomthePilgrim]

Jules Verne was the man that opened the way for most of what we know as Science Fiction. His writings led H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Andre Norton and many others to write speculative fiction.

As to his novels, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was a hard read for me. Haven't tried it again since I was about 14.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" was my first 'Verne'; bought a copy of a hardbacked Omnibus when I was eleven (my first hardback book - I still have it!). The omnibus also contains "Around the World in Eighty Days", "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "From the Earth to the Moon".
"The Mysterious Island" is probably my second favorite. However, my favorite 'Verne' (possibly my favorite read period) is . . . . .

"Michael Strogoff"! A must read for anyone reading Jules Verne. No future visions, no technology, just a Courier of the Czar attempting to warn the Grand Duke in Irkutsk of a traitor as the Tartars hordes invade Siberia.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by TomthePilgrim

Jules Verne was the man that opened the way for most of what we know as Science Fiction. His writings led H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Andre Norton and many others to write speculative fiction.

As to his novels, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was a hard read for me. Haven't tried it again since I was about 14.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" was my first 'Verne'; bought a copy of a hardbacked Omnibus when I was eleven (my first hardback book - I still have it!). The omnibus also contains "Around the World in Eighty Days", "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "From the Earth to the Moon".
"The Mysterious Island" is probably my second favorite. However, my favorite 'Verne' (possibly my favorite read period) is . . . . .

"Michael Strogoff"! A must read for anyone reading Jules Verne. No future visions, no technology, just a Courier of the Czar attempting to warn the Grand Duke in Irkutsk of a traitor as the Tartars hordes invade Siberia.

Welcome! I don't beleive we've met. Though I'm not sure whether you're new or not yet...
Journey, a hard read? I finished that in three days! The hard read for me was 20,000. I don't care about the stupid fish, only the ones trying to eat the Nautilus.
Edgar Rice Burroughs! Didn't he write some books on Mars or something? Ka wow!

[TomthePilgrim]

Howdy, Trolls' bane. I've only been active for about a month.

As to Edgar Rice Burroughs, he wrote the "Tarzan" series, the "John Carter of Mars" books and "The Land that Time Forgot" as well as a number of other novels.


P.S. GO SEAHAWKS!!!!!!!

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by TomthePilgrim

Howdy, Trolls' bane. I've only been active for about a month.

As to Edgar Rice Burroughs, he wrote the "Tarzan" series, the "John Carter of Mars" books and "The Land that Time Forgot" as well as a number of other novels.


P.S. GO SEAHAWKS!!!!!!!

I've heard of those Mars books. After all, the city on Chryse Planitia (or was it Isidis? I always mix those two up.) in RGB Mars (actually, just Red and Green Mars) was named after him.
EDIT: Welcome!

[Forfirith]

I read a lot of his books when I was 10 or so (in french of course) and I loved them.
I don't remember a lot of details of them, except from "Le tour du Monde en 80 jours", "20 000 lieux sous les mers", and a passage of "Michel Stroggof" has chocked me, I can't describe it, but I remember well because of the picture that was with it.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by Forfirith

I read a lot of his books when I was 10 or so (in french of course) and I loved them.
I don't remember a lot of details of them, except from "Le tour du Monde en 80 jours", "20 000 lieux sous les mers", and a passage of "Michel Stroggof" has chocked me, I can't describe it, but I remember well because of the picture that was with it.

Welcome!
It's always interesting to see names of books in another language. Like Le Planet Le Singes.
What's Micel Stroggof?

[Forfirith]

"Michael Strogoff"! A must read for anyone reading Jules Verne. No future visions, no technology, just a Courier of the Czar attempting to warn the Grand Duke in Irkutsk of a traitor as the Tartars hordes invade Siberia.

That's just a bit higher in the topic

[trolls' bane]

Sounds like absolute Dune to me.

[IronParrot]

I've been thinking about starting to read Verne in French. He seems lucid enough to pick up in the original language. I recently finished Around the World in Eighty Days in English, and decided to coast around Wikipedia afterwards (as I often do for hours on end).

I was very surprised to read this in the Jules Verne entry:

Mercier and subsequent British translators also had trouble with the metric system that Verne used, sometimes simply dropping significant figures, at other times keeping the nominal value and only changing the unit to an Imperial measure. Thus Verne's calculations, which in general were remarkably exact, were converted into mathematical gibberish. Also, artistic passages and whole chapters were cut because of the need to fit the work in a constrained space for publication, regardless of the effect on the plot. (The London author, Cranstoun Metcalfe (1866–1938), translated most of Verne's work into English during the first half of the 20th century.)

For those reasons, Verne's work initially acquired a reputation in English-speaking countries for not being fit for adult readers. This in turn prevented him from being taken seriously enough to merit new translations, leading to those of Mercier and others being reprinted decade after decade. Only from 1965 on were some of his novels re-translated more accurately, but even today Verne's work has still not been fully rehabilitated in the English-speaking world.

I was reading a Puffin edition with an uncredited translation, and even after flipping through it again, I can't tell if it's the one at issue. It certainly didn't seem to reflect these problems, and I'm wondering if any of you have come across the basis for the above claims. Can anyone shed light on this?

[Earniel]

Indeed curious. I can't help you as I read his books in yet another language and I don't know how that translation fits in. And I never had a head for maths anyway.

But I like the idea of reading his writings in French. I've been trying to find some good books to read and amend my French and I had not considered Jules Verne yet. Might be worth looking into, so thank you for the suggestion.