Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jul 30, 2019 Bradley rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: year-2019-bookclub, year-2019

Book club: July 2019

52 Week Challenge: a book originally written in a foreign language

I read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for my book club. I was looking forward to reading it because Jules Verne is an author that I have meant to read but hadn't gotten around to it. I knew the basics because I feel that 20,000 Leagues is one of those books that have left the land of literary classic and entered pop culture domain. Captain Nemo. The Nautilus. Giant squids. We all kinda, sorta know the basic gist Book club: July 2019

52 Week Challenge: a book originally written in a foreign language

I read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for my book club. I was looking forward to reading it because Jules Verne is an author that I have meant to read but hadn't gotten around to it. I knew the basics because I feel that 20,000 Leagues is one of those books that have left the land of literary classic and entered pop culture domain. Captain Nemo. The Nautilus. Giant squids. We all kinda, sorta know the basic gist of 20,000 Leagues.

We kinda, sorta know but we can't know because this book has no discernible plot. At least not after the Nautilus is introduced. For me, the first dozen chapters, are the most plot driven. There has been a large thing spotted at sea. Many ships have seen a creature, the same creature but it can show up in the Pacific one morning and the Atlantic the next. After the creature attacks a ship, a joint exploration is formed to locate it. The Abraham Lincoln sets sail with the acclaimed scientist Professor Pierre Aronnax, his faithful servant Conseil, and the harpooner Ned Land on board. The Abraham Lincoln engages with the sea creature and, during the encounter, our trio find themselves meeting Captain Nemo and being held as guests/prisoners on the Nautilus.

Now, from this point forward, the traditional book structure would feature our trio at odds with Captain Nemo and trying to escape their gilded floating prison. Unfortunately, the book falters from here to the end. The book starts to feature a lot of set pieces as Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax strike up a weird science love fest as Nemo guides the Nautilus to many locations so Aronnax can go underwater exploring. The Stockholm syndrome is strong with Aronnax. There is an awful amount of scientific cataloguing and classification passages, so much that I began to skip over the pages when more than two fish species were introduced. Here's an example from the later half of 20,000 Leagues.

"And as for other fish common to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses, jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder, plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with which the Nautilus hustled through these opulent waters."

The book has a lot of passages like this as the Nautilus traverses the seven seas. There are a few bright spots (a short visit to the ruins of Atlantis, a shipwreck that functions as Nemo's bank, an underwater inactive volcano base) but these are sparse. Instead it's fish and fish and more fish.

20,000 Leagues is hailed as a science fiction classic but, beyond the Nautilus being a prototype submarine, I can't really say this book is science fiction. Yet, despite its many faults, I'm still glad I read it if only to honestly say I read it. The last time I felt that way about a book was Atlas Shrugged. I can't really recommend this book. ...more

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Aug 06, 2018 Heather L rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, group-read, 2018

Finally finished! I think my problem with this one is that the narrative gets bogged down in the technical jargon -- scientific names, degrees longitude and latitude, etc. I feel like I might have more enjoyed an abridged children's version. 😐 ...more

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Jul 05, 2008 Gayle rated it it was amazing

What can I say...another classic that I'm happy I read. I admit to having NO idea what to expect, other than an underwater science fiction adventure. The details used in this book made it easy to picture the views, images and scenes experienced. The stories, history, geography, and lessons were interesting and capturing enough to make this book go very quickly. It's incredible to think this book was written in 1870 and pretty much 'predicted' some scientific inventions that followed in the 1900s ...more

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