This is the first book I ever read not-on-paper. Usually when I return one book I pick up my next one. This visit was cut short by unexpected circumstances and I had to leave without anything to read that day. I purchased this book on my phone for 99c.
I had initially thought the book - being 150 years old - might be difficult to read but I found it not so. After a moment's thought I realized that it was first written in French (duah) and I am reading an abridged translation of Verne's words - not the original writing. Naturally they smoothed out some of the rough patches.
This is a great book of adventure, but I wouldn't really call it "science-fiction" per se. Maybe it was science fiction when Verne wrote it.. submarines were in their infancy at that time and the technology in the Nautilus was still quite a ways off.
The book has periods of truly gripping and suspenseful adventure interspersed with pages of M. Aronnax, Conseil and Ned Land talking about fish. Describing the fish they see. Discussing fishing. Classifying different fish and what orders and families they belong in. Talking about cooking fish. More calcifying the fish they see on their travels.. ugh. Meanwhile the exciting bits go by a bit too quickly. I still enjoyed it, but there is a big *meh* factor throughout.
p224
It was an indescribable spectacle! Ah, why could we not communicate our sensations? Why are we imprisoned under these masks of metal and glass? Why are words between us forbidden? Why did we at least not live the life of the fish that people the liquid element, or rather that of the amphibians, who, during long hours, can transverse as they like the double domain of land and water?
p378
Here may be seen the primordial rocks that have never known the light of heaven, the lower granites that form the powerful foundation of the globe, the profound grottoes dug out of the stony mass, the outlines of such incomparable clearness, the border-lines of which stand out black as if due to the brush of certain Flemish artist. Then, beyond, an horizon of mountains, an admirable undulating line composing the background of the landscape. I cannot describe the effects of these smooth black polished rocks, destitute of moss, without a stain, and with such strange forms solidly resting on a carpet of sand that sparkled in the electric light.
p507
It was vulgar misanthropy that enclosed Captain Nemo and his companions in the sides of the Nautilus, but a sublime hatred that time could not quench.
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