Jules Verne Books

What a piece of horrible c**p. These CDs are nothing but some cheesey commentary. The sound quality is horrible. I had assumed that there would at least be some parts of stories that would be read but it is just a bunch of incomprehensible mishmash. It was a total waste of money. I gained more satisfaction from destroying the CDs then from trying to listen to them. I did keep the CD case. It was the only thing of value!

While the novels themselves are wonderful, this publication of the two novels is horrible. I have never read a book that was put together more sloppy than this. The cover is an ugly yellow / white and since all the text is white, the last part of the title on the spine can't even be read. I can't even count how many spelling and punctuation errors I've found. Names are sometimes spelled with lower case letters and occasionally there will be a period in the middle of a sentence. It also lacks the ability to print any special characters; the British Pound symbol is simply a capital L. In place of the degree symbol they use @ (Which gets very annoying after the twentieth time. There are literally dozens of latitude and longitude measurements and every single one uses @ symbol) In one chapter explaining the algebra behind the passenger's voyage it actually says "." The errors and character replacements in this were so annoying that it made it nearly impossible to read. The publisher, BiblioBazaar, should be ashamed to have released something so pathetic.

On a side note, the novels themselves are highly recommended.

I was not happy about the appearance of this book. This is a marvelous novel and I read it long time ago in Chinese version. The version had a lot of very good pictures, which helped to make the novel more interesting and attractive. And it looked like a novel. The English version I received looked like a computer programming guide rather than a novel.

At the first glance, I thought I had received an MS computer book, which used to come with old computer a few years ago. The size of the book looks like that. The fonts used look like that as well. I was truly disappointed to see such a marvelous and interesting novel would have yet appeared in such a dull, uninteresting, and boring way. There was not even a picture on the cover! Quite frankly, if I had not known this book previously, I would have paid no attention to it if I saw it.

This 138-page paperback is a gussied-up and flashy reprint of a very poor English-language translation of Verne's original 1904 French novel. It was first published in 1911 and the translator was anonymous. A much better English translation by Cranstoun Metcalfe (which is also in the public domain) appeared in 1914. The "special edition" features of this slim volume include a 2-page uninformed preface, 8 rather juvenile "discussion questions" inserted right after the story (questions such as "Are you impressed by what The Terror can do?"), and a 4-sentence "About the Author" blurb at the end of the book. All this for $11.95. Don't waste your money. You can find the same text online for free.