Books!

[WorldisQuiet5256]

If you want to read the sequel, its Jules Vern The mysterious Island.

[borys610]

You have just spoiled the biggest plot twist of this book!
It's also sequel for "Captain Grant's children".
Anyway as much as I don't like Verne, I enjoyed "The mysterious Island" really much.
His best book, for me.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Sorry, I was under the assumption that you didn't read it before.
Never read "Captain Grant's Children", so I didn't know.
I try my best not to spoil it.

Have you then not read "Journey to the center of the Earth"? Only other Vern Book I've read.

[borys610]

Well... I read many of his books.
It was fun, when I was little, but as I was reading many books, for most part of my life (till I got access to the Internet, like three years ago), with time it started boring me, and then it even started making me angry.
I think he (Verne) was writing just normal, adventure books, like today hollywood movies, without deeper sense. Just for entertainment. So it is great for kids, buts later you are starting to notice repetitive cliches and it starts boring you.
Unfortunately I reed most of his books when I was too old for them. Still I enjoyed "Mystery Island", so don't be discouraged by my review.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Understood.

[The Abacus]

Well... I read many of his books.
It was fun, when I was little, but as I was reading many books, for most part of my life (till I got access to the Internet, like three years ago), with time it started boring me, and then it even started making me angry.
I think he (Verne) was writing just normal, adventure books, like today hollywood movies, without deeper sense. Just for entertainment. So it is great for kids, buts later you are starting to notice repetitive cliches and it starts boring you.
Unfortunately I reed most of his books when I was too old for them. Still I enjoyed "Mystery Island", so don't be discouraged by my review.

His books are different from "normal" adventure books in my opinion.

[zombyrus]

Oh man I have stumbled into this conversation at exactly the right moment. I have read so much Jules Verne it is beyond reckoning.

I'd say 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was, overall, better than The Mysterious Island. I truly loved The Mysterious Island for most of it, but the plot twists (which have already been spoiled apparently?) near the end, or at least in the second half (it's been a lot of years since I read it), were just a little too much for me. There is no real reason for Verne to link together The Mysterious Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; the stories are completely unrelated until that twist just pops up, and the very end, viewed without Verne's scientific explanation, is that (SPOILER ALERT?) the island literally explodes, (END SPOILER), which is just about a step and a half too far. Plus the way they explain (Captain Nemo)'s past really kills a lot of the magic of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because the magic was that we had no idea who he really was.

Now for a Verne sequel I enjoyed, go to Round the Moon, the sequel to From the Earth to the Moon. I think those two are best read together, and I really liked both of them. Its characters and its plot strike an odd chord between the utterly rational and the absolutely insane, and that's something to which I can't say no. It's also what I think Verne did best.

His short story Master Zacharia is trippy as fuck and weirdly serious compared to the rest of what I've read. It's about some clock-maker dude who is sort of also the human embodiment of time...? Maybe I'd get it better if I reread it now.

Doctor Ox's Experiment is a novella by Verne that is just absolutely great. It's a comedy in which a scientist goes to a town where everyone is incredibly and inexplicably boring. He has a theory that increasing the oxygen content of the air will make everyone act way more extreme, and he tests the theory on the townspeople to tremendous effect.

[EDIT]
For the most part, his books aren't very deep or anything, though. I read them all in middle school and I'm not sure I really missed anything. For as much as I love the guy, he is pretty light reading, and was probably much more so in his own day.

[RETURN OF THE EDIT]

His books are different from "normal" adventure books in my opinion.

Jules Verne is the godfather of science fiction and his era's king of adventure. It's a few cuts above normal if you ask me, too.

[Rooster5man]

WorldisQuiet didn't spoil anything, Hollywood did by making those titles of the movies for the "Journey" movies...

I'm reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, I'm on "The Subtle Knife" now.

Also reading the crossover "Green Arrow/Green Lantern," as well as a book about a 15-year old boy making a graphic novel, it's called "The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl."

[zombyrus]

I heard that The Subtle Knife gets really explicitly religious, and, if you hadn't realized it while reading the earlier books, it is really weird. I've never read any of those books myself though.

Has anyone read any Dostoevsky? I would be eager to the point of absurdity to discuss Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov or The Idiot if anyone knows much about them. I'd really like to talk about The Idiot the most though, because I am in the midst of rereading it.

[The Abacus]

Has anyone read any Dostoevsky? I would be eager to the point of absurdity to discuss Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov or The Idiot if anyone knows much about them. I'd really like to talk about The Idiot the most though, because I am in the midst of rereading it.

They're on my list of books to read