Around the World in Eighty Days (Illustrated First Edition): 100th Anniversary Collection

思ったより素晴らしい！１００％満足しています。

A well written translation of the original French. A fascinating travel documentary, even to this day with modern means of transport. One small point which makes me wander wether it was a translators fault or in the original. It mentions somewhere that a ship was sailing at "10 knots an hour" which is a wrong expression as 10 knots represent the speed of 10 miles an hour, hence the expression of "10 knots an hour" would actually indicate an acceleration. Otherwise this is an excellent book, with wonderful narrative by Jules Verne. It is interesting to compare it with the old film with David Niven as Phileas Fogg.

Un libro muy bonito

Diese illustrierte Jubiläumsausgabe von Around the World in Eighty Days ist ein absolutes Highlight für Buchliebhaber. Das Buch kam schnell geliefert und war sehr gut sowie sicher verpackt. Bereits beim Auspacken fällt die hochwertige Verarbeitung auf. Die Illustrationen sind liebevoll gestaltet und verleihen der Geschichte einen ganz besonderen Charme. Als Teil der 100th Anniversary Collection eignet sich diese Ausgabe hervorragend als Sammlerstück oder Geschenk. Auch optisch macht das Buch im Regal eine sehr schöne Figur. Insgesamt eine sehr gelungene Edition eines zeitlosen Klassikers. Klare Kaufempfehlung für Fans von Jules Verne und für alle, die besondere Bücher schätzen.

Well, my ex got me interested enough in the new miniseries starring David Tennant that I watched it all the way through, and it was obvious to me the story had been reimagined, to say the least. But reimagined by how much? The only way to answer that was to watch other screen adaptations, and so I watched the epic movie from 1956, the miniseries from 1989, the Disney version from 2004 (yikes!), and a cartoon version from 1988. Well, there are common elements, but they're all a bit different too. What to do? Read the original story, I thought to myself. Yes, actually read a book. So I was very thankful to download the Kindle version of this book and read it as a "brain break" as I was working on other things on my computer. The old illustrations were a bonus. Well, it's a great story, apparently so great that nobody can just leave it alone and reproduce it faithfully. The glaring omission from the book is the balloon that seems to have to be in every screen adaptation that I've seen. My takeaway from this story is that in 1872, when it was published, it wasn't science fiction but it was very recently created reality that perhaps few knew about. The Suez canal had just been completed in 1869, passenger steamers to cross huge bodies of water were very recent, as were railroads crossing vast areas of land, as in India and the United States. Most of the stops on the trip were past, present, or soon-to-be British empire colonies. So, it might have been amazing to people of that era that all of a sudden, and with a little planning, a person could actually circle the world in eighty days. And, that probably stood the test of time pretty well until passenger aircraft went mainstream. And, Jules Verne's ending is better than any of the screen adaptations I've watched. It took my by surprise and even got me choked up a bit. Sometimes you've just gotta go back to the source material.

A classic. Great service!