Around the World in Eighty Days

"A true Englishman doesn't joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager," replied Phileas Fogg, solemnly.

With this we're off to the one of the best adventure stories... And no matter how often I read this book, I still get excited about whether they will make it back to the Reform Club in time.

Anyway, while Phileas Fogg is of course the originator of the bet and the driving force behind the trip. Having meticulously planned the route and conveyances that would allow him to circumnavigate the world, of course nothing goes to plan...

Verne's writing is fantastic in this one, because it is both funny, sensitive, and informative, and you just want to be on that trip.

But the absolute best part of the book is Fogg's man show more Passepartout.

Passepartout was by no means one of those pert dunces depicted by Moliere with a bold gaze and a nose held high in the air; he was an honest fellow, with a pleasant face, lips a trifle protruding, soft-mannered and serviceable, with a good round head, such as one likes to see on the shoulders of a friend.

He is the absolute hero of the story even though the original meeting between Fogg and Passepartou indicates that he had other plans for his time in Fogg's employment:

"You are a Frenchman, I believe," asked Phileas Fogg, "and your name is John?" "Jean, if monsieur pleases," replied the newcomer, "Jean Passepartout, a surname which has clung to me because I have a natural aptness for going out of one business into another. I believe I'm honest, monsieur, but, to be outspoken, I've had several trades. I've been an itinerant singer, a circus-rider, when I used to vault like Leotard, and dance on a rope like Blondin. Then I got to be a professor of gymnastics, so as to make better use of my talents; and then I was a sergeant fireman at Paris, and assisted at many a big fire. But I quitted France five years ago, and, wishing to taste the sweets of domestic life, took service as a valet here in England. Finding myself out of place, and hearing that Monsieur Phileas Fogg was the most exact and settled gentleman in the United Kingdom, I have come to monsieur in the hope of living with him a tranquil life, and forgetting even the name of Passepartout."

Such a great read. show less

Having watched the miniseries with David Tennant for the third time, I thought I ought really to read the original in order to better understand how many liberties the adaptation took.

The answer is "All of them - and good on it for that."

I had known about the whole sati episode, so I was prepared for some racism. I wasn't however prepared for so much racism. Aouda is an acceptable heroine only because as a Parsee she is of the "highest of the native races of India", and "received a thoroughly English education [...], and, from her manners and intelligence, would be thought an European", and "spoke English with great purity", and her relative had made enough money to be made a baronet somehow. Meanwhile "the savage Papuans [...] are in show more the lowest scale of humanity, but are not, as has been asserted, cannibals," um. Um. I guess you're trying to be even-handed, Jules, but no, please just stop talking about people. Sadly there's more of this, so much more, and it's deeply embedded in the plot - so the miniseries had the best idea to just burn it down and start from scratch as a "vaguely inspired by distant recollections of".

Aouda does get to make a pretty fantastic marriage proposal. It's a pity: she could do a lot better than some rich dude who proves that it's possible to travel around the world in 80 days if you have (in 2022 money) millions of pounds to throw at every obstacle in your path and don't mind occasionally skipping bail and fomenting mutiny. show less

You know the story and so forth, but what you might not know (unless you are psychic or I already told you) is that this book had a life-changing effect on me.

One has to read the right books at the right time, especially in childhood. Frankly, one has to read in childhood - this point is critical. I read this beautiful little novel, and for a time the world lay stretched out before me, a perfect little world full of adventure just waiting to be explored.

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that it was this book that caused me to become so obsessed with travel. I've always dreamt of far-away places, and having read this book during my formative years, and having loved every page, there's a strong possibility that I owe Verne my show more very ambitions. Thank you, sir. show less

My most recent installment book was Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne which was originally published in 1873 and I think it has definitely aged well. The story is told in a simple straightforward style, and the various global adventures move the story along at a rapid pace. The plot is a little silly yet the book comes together nicely and before too long the reader finds himself involved in the story and rooting for the participants.

The characters are distinct and well developed from the routine-obsessed, uptight yet cool main character who travels around the world based on a bet from some of the gentlemen at his club, to the sympathetic French manservant who is loyal, smart and a very good gymnast. Even the lesser show more developed characters of Aouda, the Indian lady, to Fix, the stalking policeman, are colourful and add to the story.

Around the World in Eighty Days is light, fun and makes for great escape reading. A little dated, to be sure, but overall a very good read. show less

Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days is an absolute joy. This gleeful romp, wherein Phileas Fogg places a bet with some associates at the Reform Club that he can indeed perform the titular feat in that prescribed timeframe. Verne is at his wittiest, with a wonderful cast of characters: Fogg, one of literature’s great eccentrics; his loyal and resourceful servant Passepartout; and the comically inept Detective Fix, in hot pursuit of Fogg who has become a suspect in a recent bank robbery. Along the way Verne provides panoramic travelogue summaries for each new locale, which colorfully set the scenes. The story flows like a giddy Wes Anderson screenplay - and, in my view, that’s a compliment to both Anderson and Verne.

It's not a criticism to say this is very much a novel where you have to invest in the perspective of its original audience. The wider world is no longer a vast and unknown sphere to anyone who would be reading this book, where once any kind of travel was full of wondrous terrors and terrible wonders. There's a real sense of awe in Verne's writing about far-off countries that are being conquered - in both a positive and negative sense - by the rapid onset of technology. And he has even more awe for that technology - the trains, the ships, and so on. It's like a fever dream for a small child who loves to make things go.

The plot comes dangerously close to being a comedy of escalation, with a central figure (Phileas Fogg) whom Verne quite show more clearly finds slightly risible in his stiff-upper-lippedness. Fogg buckles to nothing and never breaks his calm, even during a storm at sea or an attack by the Sioux. The real hero is, of course, stout-hearted Frenchman Passpartout, who - as Fogg's servant - is the only character with real, human emotions and reactions, receiving the bulk of the (very limited) dialogue as well as the reader's affections.

It's a thin story, barreling along like the adventure movie of its day, with lots of exotic scenery and no real time to stop. Taken as such it's quite charming, and an example of a time when it really was the travel that was important, and not the people we met along the way. show less

This might just be one of the most fast-paced classics I have read so far.

Considering how much happens during such a comparatively short book length of about 250 pages, it's no surprise that Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days was a huge success upon its release in the form of serial installments. The plot faces considerable progress during every chapter, often culminating on a cliffhanger, so it is easy to imagine that readerships during the 1870s were thrilled to learn how this story was going to continue.

Obviously, almost 150 years afterwards, some of the initial thrill of Jules Verne's adventure story has been lost simply due to the timeframe we live in. It isn't quite as extraordinary and seemingly difficult anymore to show more travel around the globe, and some of the cultural depictions feel strangely inappropriate from our modern point of view (although it should be said that the exhausting 1956 film adaptation of the story, which for some obscure reason managed to win Best Picture, was even more guilty of delivering culturally insensitive representations).

So, Verne's story really works best once you try to emphasize with the mindset of the people who must have been reading this in 1872. A sense of adventure and thrill drives the story along, something that hasn't ever quite been done before and that would have sounded so inachievable if not for some logistical changes in the world throughout the most recent years - to follow these adventures, to capture the novel's spirit of achieving something that might be deemed impossible or ridiculous by those more averse to risking something now and then to achieve your dreams. Verne's story also has some worthy messages, including the depiciton of Phileas Fogg's ambitions - the value of the entire voyage does not lie in the financial compensation that awaited him, but rather in the thrill and excitement of actually having conquered this seemingly inachievable bet, of having done something to be proud of for the rest of his life.

It's a fun and entertaining read that has deservedly turned into a classic of the adventure genre. show less