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The Lost World
Mar. 20th, 2022 04:37 pmBook Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
The American spelling grates, and I don't know if it's always spelt that way in translation, but this was a free Kindle download from 2020. I needed a bit of escapism. I'm sure I read Conan Doyle's The Lost World when I was younger, although I'm not sure whether I finished it or not; it didn't make a strong impression. Although this story predates it by several decades, it has a similar feel. The characters do have an air of central casting - a hubristic professor, his cautious nephew, and an impassive Icelandic factotum. Starting with a cryptic fragment that falls out of a rare book Professor Liedenbrock has bought, with a Fermat-like statement of a journey to the centre (that's how I'm spelling it) of the Earth by a medieval savant, Liedenbrock and his nephew (who narrates, rather wordily) travel from Germany to Iceland, where they climb a volcano and descend into the Earth through its cavities. It's not difficult to find holes in the plot - mainly around the amount of supplies they are carrying for the length of their journey and the remarkable battery life of the Ruhmkorff lamps they take with them - but that's not really the point. The science aspect makes little sense now, but some of it probably was at least plausible when the book was written, and in any case that doesn't matter too much (certainly compared to Around the World in 80 Days, which is still a feasible subject for treatment today), as the focus is on an exotic adventure.
The American spelling grates, and I don't know if it's always spelt that way in translation, but this was a free Kindle download from 2020. I needed a bit of escapism. I'm sure I read Conan Doyle's The Lost World when I was younger, although I'm not sure whether I finished it or not; it didn't make a strong impression. Although this story predates it by several decades, it has a similar feel. The characters do have an air of central casting - a hubristic professor, his cautious nephew, and an impassive Icelandic factotum. Starting with a cryptic fragment that falls out of a rare book Professor Liedenbrock has bought, with a Fermat-like statement of a journey to the centre (that's how I'm spelling it) of the Earth by a medieval savant, Liedenbrock and his nephew (who narrates, rather wordily) travel from Germany to Iceland, where they climb a volcano and descend into the Earth through its cavities. It's not difficult to find holes in the plot - mainly around the amount of supplies they are carrying for the length of their journey and the remarkable battery life of the Ruhmkorff lamps they take with them - but that's not really the point. The science aspect makes little sense now, but some of it probably was at least plausible when the book was written, and in any case that doesn't matter too much (certainly compared to Around the World in 80 Days, which is still a feasible subject for treatment today), as the focus is on an exotic adventure.