Books I read last week:
Books I plan to read this week:
The idea for this weekly post was taken from J. Kaye’s Book Blog!
When I was home over Thanksgiving my dad suggested to me that I read a book titled The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. I hadn’t heard of this particular novel, but was familiar with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea so had a general idea of what the book might be like.
So I began to research The Mysterious Island. In researching I discovered that it was, in fact, part of a sort of trilogy written by Verne. The first book in the trilogy was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and written as sort of a companion book to Leagues was a book titled In Search of the Castaways (or, as the author originally titled it, The Children of Captain Grant). So, in November I began a journey through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, followed by Castaways and just yesterday finished up the trio with The Mysterious Island. Following are my reviews for each novel.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Rating: 4 out of 5 stars)
As an adventure story, there are few that can touch this classic. I remember reading through this book around 10 years old and how much I loved reading about all of the various life forms beneath the sea. I also credit this book for my fascination with all things aquatic.
There’s a lot of criticism on all of the technical jargon included in this book and I don’t really understand that. If this doesn’t interest the reader it’s simple to just skim over the information and or skip it altogether. It’s not vital to the story, it just enriches it. But enrichment aside, the story does well standing on its own.
Jules Verne’s interest in science is so incredibly apparent. He really was a man before his time. Everything had a plausible explanation (although I admit to not having much knowledge in the areas he was writing on).
His characters were rich and full of life. Nemo was deliciously mysterious throughout the entire length of the book. The Dr., his man servant and Ned all had their own distinct personalities.
My father recommended I read this book again (he actually wanted me to read the third in the trilogy – In Search of the Castaways being the second, and The Mysterious Island being the third) and I’m glad I did. So often people talk about the classics and if you haven’t read one in a while it seems like the stories are remembered as dull and hard to read, but once again, as I dove back into this classic book, I was reminded of why I read so many of them as a young teenager.
In Search of the Castaways, Or The Children of Captain Grant (Rating 4 out of 5 stars)
Another romping adventure by Jules Verne. This was a new book to me and I love it with a book immediately starts out with a great people, objects and an incredible mission. Not just a note in a bottle, the bottle is found in a shark! Immediately I was sucked in.
There was fantastic adventures through Patagonia and Australia and New Zealand. Brushes with bandits, cannibals and the tribal people. In all of his writing, Verne comes off as respectful and full of admiration for the natives of the lands he’s writing about. He’s full of information (as much as was available at that time) and does not hesitate to make fun of his own country, in the form of the French geographer, Paganel.
A very satisfying, fun, educational read. I enjoyed it even more than 20,000 Leagues just because the descriptions of places were much more entertaining to me.
The Mysterious Island (Rating 5 out of 5 stars)
I loved and hated this book. In The Mysterious Island Jules Verne creates a story similar to The Swiss Family Robinson story that I grew up loving. But this book is much more in depth and provides an intriguing mystery to spice things up.
Five men escape from America during the Civil War in a balloon. They are blown far south and are wrecked upon an island with no supplies.
Verne goes in depth in how the men manage to make a colony out of nothing. In their party are an engineer, a newspaper man, a freed slave, a boy and a sailor. With their combined knowledge (and the superb knowledge of the engineer) they manage to make an island life worthy of making even a modern person wishing to visit.
Throughout the book Verne drops “mysterious occurances”. These keep the reader highly interested despite pages and pages of descriptions that Verne is notorious for. Despite the slow movement throughout 75% of the book this is, by far, my favorite of his novels. If you are interested in survival (and the men in this book are what a “real” survivor is) and science this book is certain to satisfy you
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