Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)

How do you make a book with giant lizards and cavemen living in a hidden underground world boring? It helps if the first half of the book is spent just getting your characters underground, and the second half of the book is spent with the characters mostly wandering aimlessly through blind tunnels or drifting without direction on a raft. It also helps if your narrator is a whiny coward whose only claim to character "depth" is that he's in love with his cousin. Have his companions be a silent strong man with no hint of internal life and an old egomaniac with shallow motives and you've got an almost perfect recipe for turning your book into a long, tedious slog. Oh, and did I mention to be sure to return your characters to the surface via a deus ex machina ending?

Definitely goes on my list of the ten worst books I've ever forced myself to slog through. ( )

Jules Verne'den okuduğum 4. kitap oldu.Filmini izlediğimden beri en merak ettiğim kitaplardan biriydi sonunda bu merakımı tatmin ettim.Filmini izlemeseydim kitabı daha fazla beğeniceğimi düşünüyorum,konusunu zaten etkileyici buldum.Kitapta erkek olan bir karakterin filmde kadın olması dışında çok fazla farklılık yok. ( )

Let's go on an adventure!

But first, an apology to Mr. Verne. I avoided this book for many years because I'm a fan of planetology and anyone who attempts to convince me that they can get this deep into the crust has GOT TO BE SHITTING ME. So what did I do? I avoided it.

Never mind when this came out and never mind about dinos and giants and lightning storms and great underground oceans and a very distinctive and cooler mantle.

As Science Fiction, with just a grain of credulity, the novel is GREAT! :) I mean, Verne even gives us the puzzle at the very beginning and sets up the great scientist against all the other great scientists and goes out to disprove the super, super hot interior theory! That's a big nod to science, yo. Let the handwavium commence. :)

I refuse to refer to this book as Journey to the Center of the Earth ever again. It will henceforth be referred to as Journey to the Interior of the Earth. It's true enough. 320 kilometers deep. That's not a lot. It's just a tiny fraction of the crust.

But for a few blokes first walking then rushing forth on a grand underground waterway, meeting vast monsters in vast caverns, getting separated and having to determine their locations by each other by the time it takes the speed of sound to get to them, I have to say that this ranks right up there with the very, very best adventure novels I've ever read.

I can easily imagine transplanting any number of its features upon an alien world and being just as thrilled. Move over, Doyle. Verne is the reigning champion. :)

Just... wow. :) ( )

A a classic that I should have read some time ago, but never had. I'm not a sci-fi fan. so I kept putting off this read. All in all, this was a good read. The characters, while no backstory, are well developed within the story line. The journey was alternately exciting and boring. Exciting when we see human-guarding mastodons, but incredibly boring when it takes 120 pages or so to describe the various genus of prehistoric mammals. The ending was a bit abrupt. Verne definitely has a way with words and vocabulary, even in the sci-fi genre. The words are beautiful, varied, and well-placed/used. ( )

More “adventure” than “science fiction”. ( )