Book Nerd’s Comments (group member since Dec 20, 2018)

Book Nerd’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

You can understand why "larboard" was replaced with "port". It sounds almost the same as "starboard" when you're yelling across a ship. But I don't see what's wrong with right and left. :p

They sometimes said "volume" or "density" when talking about gravity. Gravity is determined by mass. No big deal. Thanks.

I did enjoy From the Earth to the Moon more. Though it wouldn't work as it was written, the space gun was a cool idea and way ahead of it's time.

I'm through the first twelve chapters and really enjoying it. Travel was such an adventure back then when the world was "bigger".

Mikiko wrote: "At the moment, I am reading a Japanese classic translated into English, I Am A Cat (Wagahai wa Neko de Aru) by Natsume Sōseki."
Cool, I want to read that soon. We're reading Kokoro in August.

I've been waiting for a copy. Guess I'll read at least a little of the online version though I hate reading off a screen.

There just really wasn't much to it. I guess Verne didn't want to speculate about what was actually on the moon.

So far it's a ton of description of the moon's surface. I liked From the Earth to the Moon better.

They keep saying "volume" and "density" when they mean mass. I think Verne would have known better. Has anybody read it in french? I wonder if that's a mistranslation.

Good story. The creatures reminded me of Lovecraft's deep ones. Also I wonder if James Cameron has read this.
There was a lot of explanation of the mechanism that made the sphere sink but I couldn't really picture it. Somehow cables made it sink and then it reeled them in?

Beagle, Peter S. The Last Unicorn
Hodgson, William Hope The Night Land
Stoker, Bram Dracula
Tolkien, JRR The Hobbit
Tolkien, JRR The Fellowship of the Ring
Tolkien, JRR The Two Towers
Tolkien, JRR The Return of the King
Tolkien, JRR The Silmarillion
Twain, Mark A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Wow, my list is too short lol.
I hope to read the Conan Chronicles in the next year or two. That's about it for classic fantasy. Fantasy is such a big genre right now.

Asimov, Isaac Foundation #1(All of Asimov's robots-empire-foundations stuff)
Asimov, Isaac Foundation and Empire #2
Asimov, Isaac Second Foundation #3
Asimov, Isaac I, Robot
Asimov, Isaac The Caves of Steel
Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray The Martian Chronicles
Capek, Karel R.U.R.
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey(so much bettrer than the movie!!!)
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle
Heinlein, Robert A. Red Planet
Heinlein, Robert A. Starship Troopers
Heinlein, Robert A. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Herbert, Frank Dune
Herbert, Frank Dune Messiah
Herbert, Frank Destination Void
Herbert, Frank Under Pressure
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Jackson, Shirley The Lottery
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness
Lovecraft, HP At the Mountains of Madness
Lovecraft, HP The Call of Cthulhu
Lovecraft, HP Herbert West—Reanimator
Lovecraft, HP The Colour out of Space
Lovecraft, HP The Doom That Came to Sarnath
Lovecraft, HP The Dunwich Horror
Lovecraft, HP The Horror at Red Hook
Lovecraft, HP The Rats in the Walls
Matheson, Richard I Am Legend
Orwell, George 1984
Orwell, George Animal Farm (this is sci-fi?)
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Stapledon, Olaf Star Maker
Stoker, Bram Dracula(also this is sci-fi?)
Verne, Jules Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Verne, Jules Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wells, HG The Time Machine
Wells, HG The War of the Worlds

I've been reading Heinlein. Starship Troopers was okay but I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I want to read Stranger in a Strange Land soon.
Will read Jules Verne - Round the Moon and a few others with the group read.

So many great lines in this book I've been highlighting. Here's one amusing one:

Main character: "Got an empty memory bank?"
Self-aware computer: "Yes, Man. Ten-to-the-eight-bits-capacity."

Lol, can store a large image file.

Rafael wrote: "There's food at the bottom of the ocean. There's no food inside melted rocks. And at these vents the most higher temperature is 407 ºC or 765 °F, This temperature is reached at the depth 13 km."
Okay, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass so I'll stop arguing after this but I'm saying there could be life deep in the crust, not 13 km down. An ecosystem would have to start with microorganisms and chemosynthesis same as the ocean vents and larger life would have to gradually filter down and adapt to survive there just like I assumed happened at the vents.

If there WAS life down in the mantle it would have to be silicon based and that's just wild theorizing but fun to imagine.

Amber wrote: "O. Can't live without? Chocolate & Cheese (not together)"
Everything goes with chocolate!

less likely than the thermal vent ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean?

Rafael wrote: "Verne was a great author, but this one is not scientific stories at all that he had created. This book takes the idea from the hollow Earth, the idea that the earth has no core. The mere existence ..."
Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I thought they were just in really deep and big caves. The earths crust is up to five miles thick so it's possible that there are some relatively big empty spaces down there. Of course pressure is a major problem for surface life but there could be exotic life down there.

I'm really enjoying this one. It'll come in handy when I finally get around to overthrowing the government.

Maybe it's just because I grew up with the movie but I love the first half, which is just like the movie, I can take or leave the second half.

One thing, my sense of scale was all messed up. I got the impression that the Rock Biter was huge and the Nighthob and Snail Rider were more or less human sized. In the book the snail rider is clearly tiny.

This is a great story but they don't actually get anywhere near the center of the earth.

Lesle wrote: "The acronym TANSTAAFL (for "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch") appears in Robert Heinlein's 1966 sci-fi novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, as the slogan of a revolt by lunar colonists against their earthly overlords."

That ain't not a double negative. Implies there IS a free lunch.

More than half way through. Really enjoying it. I lost a day of reading trying to draw cell diagrams. :p

It seems to me they're putting a whole lot of trust in Mike. Mannie was saying it's stupid to have one computer controlling so much but their whole revolution depends on him. He's young and naive really. He could turn on them or be tricked.