Let's Bust a Recap : Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Well, we've kicked off our 2023 reading strong...by finishing up the two books in progress I started last year. Ha! The first one was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by French author Jules Verne. Cody and I started this one together back in September, and although we started well, our reading aloud time took a backseat when the holidays hit, and we were only reading a chapter or two (of the 47 chapter book) per week. 

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was originally published in French in 1871. Like many novels being written around that time period, it was first serialized between 1869 and 1870. It was translated into English a couple of years later by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier. Even though it's pretty widely recognized that Mercier's translation isn't very good, it is somehow still the standard English translation with later translations recycling a lot of Mercier's mistakes. Since the 1960s, there have been several new and complete translations published, but the basic English copy you'd find in most bookstores is going to be some form of Mercier's translation which is what we have. (You gotta love those gorgeous Barnes & Noble special editions though, right?)

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the year is 1866 and ships from many different countries are sighting what they believe to be some incredible sea monster all over the oceans. The United States government puts together an expedition to find and destroy this monster, and Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist, is invited to go along. He is the narrator of our story which is written in the style of his personal journal and account of their ensuing adventures. His faithful assistant Conseil, and a Canadian harpooner named Ned Land are our other two principal characters. When the expedition finds the monster and attacks it, these three find themselves hurled off the ship and save themselves by climbing onto the monster itself which they are surprised to discover is no monster, but a futuristic submarine. They are eventually taken aboard and meet the inventor and commander of the vessel, the mysterious Captain Nemo who informs them that to maintain the all-important secrecy of his watercraft, they will remain as permanent inmates on the Nautilus. 

What follows is a detailed account of their time on board and the many adventures they encounter. While Verne has a dry sense of humor that had me laughing out loud at times, and the actual adventures are thrilling, the in-between bits were just boring. There were chapters where all Aronnax was doing was describing the various sea life, explaining the mechanics of the Nautilus, or chronicling their travel from place to place. There was a lot of math and a lot of scientific names that I twisted my tongue trying to pronounce as I read this aloud to Cody, and frankly, I'm more of a lit/history lover than a maths and sciences nerd. But overall, I'd say the exciting parts outweighed the boring parts making this classic one worth reading. However, my enthusiasm for our other Jules Verne books has been tempered accordingly. (We also have Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth.) Being that I don't speak French, I'm not sure what all was lost in translation, but Cody and I both enjoyed the humor in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and every so often, I'd come across a simple line that stopped me in my tracks and I'd look up at Cody and say, "What a great line!"

So do Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land ever escape the Nautilus? For that, you'll have to read this one for yourself.