Jules Verne Books

The Castle of the Carpathians is a difficult story to read as the situations created are foreign to modern day experience. Jules Verne has a way of describing people, places, and events which makes a reader want to tell him to "Get on with it!" The build-up to set the stage before each significant event appears to wander off aimlessly. Each time it eventually becomes clear what Verne was getting at and the story gets back on track.

Verne's descriptions of wanderings through the castle may make sense to someone who has been in a similarly constructed castle, however to anyone else it is impossible to follow the descriptions, and it becomes a jumble of places with vaguely familiar names. Perhaps this is due to the writing style changes of 100+ years and a lack (on my part) of familiarity with late 19th century literary style. But for me this was a difficult story to finish. I persevered and completed it, but my book list does not contain a recommendation for The Castle of the Carpathians.

I would rate it 3.5 STARS.

I was merely 14 when I read the book in Roumanian. The plot was quite interesting, even Sherlock Holmes-like. The read feels very Jules Verne, but the plot nay. I remember at the beginning of the book, the descriptive details of the Transylvanian country and mountain side were very close to reality (Transylvania is a region in Roumania). Even for a young lad, who found the story captivating, the story was quite un-believable from early on. The spooky, mysterious, and metaphysical events that take place are all demystified at the end of the novel.

Enjoy the read!

This book is apparently a lasergraphic reproduction of the edition published in 1900 by the Saalfield Publishing Company of New York and Chicago. The text reproduces fairly well as it is digitally enhanced but the illustrations in low resoloution gray scale leave much to be desired. They do however give the general idea of the original. The text is identical to that published by the Merriam Company in 1894 and Sampson and Low (London, 1893). Given that there have been no republications of this early work, this Fredonia edition makes the original historical text available at a reasonable price to a wide audience. Using print-on-demand technology it is now possible to offer these books without the expense of a maintaining a large inventory. Given the current interest in Jules Verne these Fredonia titles will undoubtedly find a good following among both amateur and professional Verne scholars. Unfortunately the scanty information provided by the publisher about the sources for these books leaves it up to outside reviewers to provide this historical information as best they can.

Jules Verne is known as the father of science fiction, however this is one of the few novels that falls outside of that genre. Other non-science fiction works by Verne are sometimes lack-luster (specifically "Measuring the Meridian") , but that is not the case for "800 Leagues on the Amazon". While "800 Leagues" is a departure from Verne comfort zone he still delivers a novel that is full of intrigue and suspense.

The first 100 pages of "800 Leagues" reads very slow and is somewhat tedious, but the story does build suspense to and finishes strong. Verne is in his full glory has he paints the wildlife, fauna, and landscape of the Amazon region. Ulimately the story is one of family, honor, and loyalty despite the circumstances of life. Verne has always made "honor" a strong theme in his works and "800 Leagues" may be his finest exmple.

My final verdict - while this is not Verne's best work (my favorite will always be "The Mysterious Island") it is still in the top half of what I read of Verne. I would compare to "5 Weeks in a Balloon" with "800 Leagues" being slightly inferior. However, "800 Leagues" is still a must read for Verne fans.

I've read lots of Jules Verne books, and this is not like anything I've read before. VERY slow, and he gets so tied up in descriptions of South America and flora and fauna that he forgets about the story he's telling. And even the descriptions are bad: they go on ad nauseum about nothing of interest, and some things it is difficult to comprehend even what the subject is.
And there is a lack of that sense of suspense and mystery found in his other great novels.
It was boring, dragged on, and I am sorry I wasted the few days of reading it. Many times, when I read a Verne novel, it inspires me to reasearch more of the region he is writing about, but not this time. I am glad the Amazon is more interesting than this...

It was a good story line. If you like books that are very descriptive and allow you to "see" the images, then you'd like that aspect of it. As a matter of fact, I'd say that most of the text is descriptions of the environment of the Amazon. I will say, that there wasn't much of an ending. I liked it up until the very last paragraph. After that I regretted spending the time to read it. Also, the event that we await at the end of the journey was never even written about. It's as if the story was cut off before the ending. It's like watching a movie and the electricity going off near the end. This wasn't my favorite Verne book, but he's still my favorite writer.

This is a poorly formatted edition of the public domain translation available several places on the internet. This translation was heavily edited for the english language edition by Verne's publisher. For a new translation from the original french version, containing three more chapters, try ISBN 1-84282-080-x. It is more enjoyable reading.

I would like to start off by applauding Amazon and the publisher for printing this relatively obscure title. A reader looking for the mainstream works by Verne has multiple options - those of us who want to read a larger selection of his works ...must search!

"The Underground City" is a relatively short but entertaining novel. The first 100 pages read very fast - and reminded me strongly of "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The final 80 pages were a little more hoo-hum... and I was left disappointed in the ending. In fact, the novel was a little disjointed - and I wondered if this was one of the woks that was finished by Verne's son after his death (Which I still do not know).

Some reveiwers find the story unrealistic... well that is to be expected by Verne. While many think of his works as "Science Fiction" I think they have moved to the genre of fantasy. Verne transports you to a time and place where science was seen as having limitless possibilities... now in the 21st century we better understand what is possible and what is just our imagination.

"The Underground City" is a typical work by Verne. Certainly not his greatest work - it really doesn't compare to "The Mysterious Island". Yet, most fans will be satisified that they were able to find and read something that is just "typical" Verne.

The story line is a little far-fetched, but somewhat plausible. It is a fun book to read. The characters are fun to read and the plot is pretty good, too. Not the best book in the world, but worth reading if you're bored some winter day.

I thought that the book had one of the best plot lines I've ever seen, reguardless of the fact that there is only slight building up to the climax. The only thing that I didn't think was that good about the book was that about every other page, Jules Verne would go into a paragraph description of the animals. For example, he would say something like: I just saw a tuna. But not the normal tuna, it was yellow-bellied, had dorsal fins that went at a downward angle, etc." Otherwise, I thought it was a great read and well worth the money. I will be purchasing more of Jules Verne's books very soon. I highly suggest for you to read this book. Another thing, if you enjoyed watching the 1954 "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Film," I highly suggest the book because the movie only gives a small picture of what actually occurred during their submarine venture and the book tells you everything, and the occurrences are just amazing.

The novel basically tells the story of Professor Arronax, Ned Land and Conseil who get taken aboard the Nautilus and experiences many adverntures, such as going to Atlantis, an underwater hunt, getting trapped in an ice block and much more.

This paperback, one of the Barnes and Noble "Classics Editions" is a republication of the original English translation by Rev. Lewis Page Mercier made in 1872. Mercier's translation leaves out 20% of the book and makes numerous other textual errors. These facts have been known for fifty years. The editor is a Victoria Blake, not otherwise identified, who in fact recommends in the Appendix that for further reading one might consult the complete novel as translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter and published by the Naval Institute Press in 1993.

This book is about a detective name Nemo.He is at an underwater submerine,and they used a lot of math.They are trying to capture a realy long seamonster.The rest I won't tell.

The things that I like about this book is everything,some you'll hate.

The things that I hate about this book is that yhe ending wasn't the best thing for me,but I think you'll love it.Also the math part I don't like it only if you like the math part.

This book was is the great adventure\underwater detective book. I wish that They would make a movie out of it.THIS BOOK YOU'LL LOVE!!!!
I hope you will ENJOY this book!!!!!!!!!!

If you're going to read one of the great classics of literature-and you should-don't pick up this edition. It is a reprint of a version that dates back to the 1870s and was exposed more than 40 years ago for cutting nearly one-quarter of Verne's story and mistranslating much of the remainder. Its reappearance in this edition is all the more amazing considering Tor's status as a leading science fiction publisher, and the company's willingness to perpetrate this fraud on is many readers is truly stunning. If you want to truly get to know Verne's novel, pick up the elegant Naval Institute Press edition, in a modern, complete, updated translation, with commentary by the leading American Verne expert today, Walter James Miller. That book also comes with many of the artistic engravings that illustrated the original French first edition (no illustrations are to be found in the B&N Mercier reprint). Less attractive but more academic is the Oxford Classics version of Twenty Thousand Leagues. This review is posted on behalf of the North American Jules Verne Society by Jean-Michel Margot, president NAJVS.

Shameful. To use a widely discredited translation when better exist, and to have such horrendous errors in the notes is just shameful. There is absolutely no reason to REprint a discredited translation that is full of outrageous errors and huge omissions, and to "enrich" the text with completely erroneous notes. Abysmal. This butchered version of a great story deserves a negative five star rating. No school should purchase this edition, no library should have it on its shelves, and no individual should waste their hard earned money on this when better editions already exist, and when better editions can be easily and readily reprinted by the publisher, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. _Much_ better editions exist. Read the excellent reviews below by J. M. Margot and F. P. Walter to discover what editions you should be looking for.

And if you are a fan of Verne, or just a fan of quality publishing, please write Simon & Schuster, Inc., and tell them to replace this absolutely abysmal edition:

Jack Romanos President and CEO
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212-698-7000
Fax: 212-698-7099

A sorry example of the laziness and irresponsibility of many trade editors today -- and it's especially shameful in a publication targeted to students and youngsters.

First, the basic text is dreadful: though unidentified, it's the long-discredited translation signed by "Mercier Lewis" and rushed into print in 1872 by the London firm of Sampson, Low. As modern scholars have documented on numerous occasions, Verne's original French was politically censored, drastically abridged, couched in stilted Victorian prose, and riddled with hundreds of inane translating errors. Its clunky, antiquated English is something no American student could possibly enjoy ("I own my heart beat," says the narrator, who actually means, "I admit my heart was pounding"). As for the translating blunders, some are asinine beyond belief -- Verne's characters start a fire with a lentil (Verne: lens) . . . loosen bolts with a key (Verne: wrench) . . . and claim iron is lighter than water (Verne: the opposite, of course).

Are these obscure facts? Anything but. Over the past four decades, this translation's inadequacy has been bemoaned repeatedly in basic reference works (Taves & Michaluk's JULES VERNE ENCYCLOPEDIA), online (the Jules Verne Forum at http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum/), and in readily available MODERN translations of this novel (e.g., the paperback editions from Signet, Oxford, and the U.S. Naval Institute). What's more, not only has Simon & Schuster's current editorial staff shirked the most rudimentary homework, they're apparently too lazy even to double-check their OWN publishing files: as long ago as 1966, S & S issued a revised edition of the Mercier Lewis translation; they hired NYU expert Walter James Miller to correct and reword Lewis's text -- which, in a specially written preface, Miller denounced as a "botched up translation . . . slashed and slapdash." Lewis's renderings, he said, "bristle with technical errors and omit whole passages vital to the technical integrity, the character development, even the humor of the story."

In short, Simon & Schuster could easily have reprinted their own 1966 version, not ideal but vastly better than Lewis's original. Or, alternatively, they could have reprinted either of the other two English translations in the public domain, both superior in accuracy and completeness. But, these days, indolence and ignorance apparently rule in the halls of S & S.

So, though this Enriched Classics series boasts on its back covers about its "practical scholarship," the said scholarship, not surprisingly, often works out to be dismally unreliable. The "helpful notes" and "insightful commentary" can range from the useless to the ridiculous. On p. 425, the explanatory notes can only tell us that such sea creatures as tubipores, gorgones, and spondyles are "various kinds of marine life." Big help. (They're corals, sea fans, and oysters, folks.) On the other hand, when the notes attempt more, they're often worse: on p. 426, for instance, I was amazed to learn that porphitae and asterophytons are "igneous outcrops." Nooo!!! These aren't rocks, people, they're animals! (Jellyfish and starfish, for Lord's sake.)

If you're as astonished as I am that such bluff and nonsense is being palmed off on our kids as "scholarship," write S & S this week.

Meantime, what edition of 20,000 LEAGUES should you acquire? First, in addition to this Enriched Classics version, also avoid those other student editions (!) published by Scholastic, Tor, and Apple -- they don't identify it either, but they all blindly reprint this same hopeless 1872 Mercier Lewis translation. Fortunately, however, there are four sound paperback texts of 20,000 LEAGUES, all readily available, all immeasurably superior in accuracy, completeness, and readablility. For general readers the Bonner (Bantam) and Brunetti (Signet) translations are both worthwhile. For readers wanting an annotated edition, there are two good ones: Butcher's (Oxford), which is strong on the novel's genesis and manuscript record, and Miller's own illustrated retranslation (U.S. Naval Institute), which is strong on the marine biology -- and on which I myself collaborated. All are competitively priced, so there's no need to settle for something inferior.

By the way, the above-cited deficiencies may well be typical of this Enriched Classics collection as a whole -- I note that their edition of Dumas' MONTE CRISTO also features a seriously inadequate text. Students, parents, and teachers are warned to proceed with caution vis-à-vis the entire series.

In this little-known work of the great master, Jules Verne not only predicts the invention of the sport of skydiving, but also invents one of its greatest cartoon gags: the packing of laundry instead of parachute. As Isadore Unlockt plummets from his air-machine, we actually read the familiar gag from a billion Warner Bros. cartoons, as he pulls his rip-cord, watches the underwear and socks fly out, looks glumly at the reader, and slowly waves bye-bye.
His body impacts a mountain (the same one from the title) and Verne spends the rest of the novel discussing the various soil compositions of said mountain.
Not a great read, but worth $167, I'd say, to read the very first instance of what would become a very tired joke.

I had just finished reading the very entertaining "The Mysterious Island" when I picked up Master of the World. It seems as though Jules Verne had lost his touch when he wrote this one. The story lacks any real suspsense. It follows the story of an investigator treking the the Eastern U.S. in search of a mysterious craft that is spotted all over. I didn't find it all that interesting or thought provoking like other Jules Verne works.

I am rather surprised that there is no review yet for this book, in any edition, yet on Amazon, especially since this book is available is mass paperback. I personally found this to be a rather lacking book. It is yet another variation on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne seems to have repeated a similar storyline in multiple books, and none of them are as good as 20,000 Leagues. Once again there is a man who has "mastered" nature, creating a machine that can traverse roads at twice the speed of the fastest car, can change into a submarine and boat, and can fly. Once again the main character is taken aboard by the mad scientist and travels around trying to figure out how to escape. Verne is a good writer, but it is not especially evident in this book. There are a few major issues I had with this book:

First, it is INCREDIBLY obvious right from the beginning that the machine can fly, and this is the key to the "mystery" of the book. Verne gives three different accounts: one of a vehicle travelling by land, one of a boat, and one of a submarine. They occurr weeks apart, all look similar, and after an excruciatinly long time, the characters in the book figure out what the reader guessed instantly: they are the same machine. Now, at the beginning of the book the main character visits the "Great Eyrie," a hollowed out top of a mountain which is entirely inaccessable (remember, it takes place around the turn of the last century, so they didn't have the technology to get up there). There had been smoke and strange noises rising from the Eyrie, so he (a police officer) investigates. The main character fails to get up, and says numerous times things along the lines of "only a flying machine could get up there," or "you'd have to fly to get up there." Then, some of the sightings of the machine happen in places it a land travelling machine could not get to, prompting more "only a flying machine could get there" statements. The main character then spends most of the middle of the book trying to figure out how it got there. It was insanely tedious reading it, because it was so plainly obvious that it could fly, but the main character stubbornly refused to acknowledge this despite numerous blatent clues and even the explicit suggestion by his boss. I can't remember a more aggrivating section of a book, because the reader knew right away what the solution was, but the main character did not for no apparent reason. He even SAW THE WINGS folded up on the side, and couldn't figure it out. The fact that the discovery that it was a flying machine was presented as a huge surprise by Verne did not help. Verne must have an extremely low opinion of his audience to think that they had not figured it out within the first 20 pages. Did I mention that the main character doesn't figure it out until about 100 pages later, desipite spending almost that whole part of the book trying to figure it out?

Also, the book really lacked the excitement in Verne's other books. It was mostly about the main character not being able to climb a mountain, or reading newspaper articles about the exploits of the machine he was too stupid to figure out.

Finally, the science was simply ridiculous. I realize that it is fiction, but come on, even fiction should be at least remotely plausable. Verne tries to pass of the machine as somehow drawing energy from air, then later explains that it was powered by electricity (with no apparent source), then later goes back to the air explanation. He could at least have been consistent.

In short, avoid this book, even if you like the rest of Verne's books. It is simply not well done, drags horribly, and in rather insulting to the intelligence of the reader.

Overall grade: D

I have read about a dozen books by Jules Verne - and "Measuring the Meridian" is my least favorite. What is missing is Verne's sense of adventure and to some extent his ability to construct a flowing narrative.

The title "Measuring the Meridian" describes 90% of the what takes place in the novel (or novella). Three English and three Russian atronomers traveling through South Africa measuring triangles in order to accurately determine the length of a meridian. Verne has never been know for great character development, but "Measuring the Meridian" is a new low for him. The 3 English and 3 Russians are all very one-dimensional - and one of the Russians is rarely even mentioned!

At the end there is about 25 pages of adventure - however- as a whole this reads like a greatly watered down version of "5 weeks in a balloon". My recommendation - this is only for serious Verne fans and scholars.

As a side-note- I do applaud Amazon offering more of the obscure titles published by Jules Verne and other authors. While I am not overly kind to "Measuring the Meridian" in this review - I am very appreciative that I had a source to actually buy the book!

The story is classic Jules Verne and recommended for all fans. The Dodo Press edition is incorrectly printed. Book II is identical to Book I so the book is twice as long as should be (Book I is the complete story). The Dodo Press edition is a waste of paper and shelf space.