Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours

A fast-paced adventure dripped with cliches and humor - I listened to the audio read by Jim Dale and it was a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

There's something rather charming and fantastic about this work, and in the way that Verne manages to bring to life characters in even such a fast-paced and simply told tale as this one. Certainly, the language is as dated as the narrative and the modes of transportation involved in Fogg's journey, but in an odd way, that feels to make it all the more fantastic and believable. Strange as that might be.I don't think I would have had the patience for this tale when I was younger, so I'm glad to have finally gotten around to it now. Certainly, I'd recommend it.

Delightful book. Passepartout is the real hero; saving lives all over the globe.

This was a very suspenseful, exciting book! This was the first Verne book I've ever read, and he is very good at keeping readers gnawing on their nails at the edge of their seats. The story has humor sprinkled throughout it that had me laughing out loud. I loved it; I know I say this about nearly everything I read, but this truly was a wonderful book!

It's Jules Verne. It's not fabulous - but it's not bad either. It was a fairly easy read. Nothing to rave about.

excelent book to read i also wish to travel around the world but not only in eighty days

This book was a tricky one to get my hands on. It was hiding in a box in my basement. Now its up in my room comfortably now that its been read. its was the story of an inventor from Britain, who teamed up with his faithful servant to circumnavigate the globe.I thought it was a great story line. Lots of change happens to the characters throughout the journey. THE BOOK IS MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH BETTER THAN THE MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne's main character, Phileas Fogg, is presented with a challenge. To journey around the world, all in 80 days. Phileas' attitude towards the journey is naive, but his servant, Passepartout, is worrisome about the journey, and the various gains and losses of time on their schedule.The book takes you on a journey, around the world in 80 days, with the characters. I think that this book provides a great reading environment, as well as an overall experience. Many people have had the same as I have, therefore making this book a classic.

A classic, with good reason. There was a certain amount of 'Deus ex machina', but it didn't detract from the enjoyment of the book. I found it interesting how Verne subtly brought up Phileas Fogg's despondency, at the end - it was a while before I clued in as to what Fogg was actually planning to do.While the story was delightful, I have a couple of quibbles with this particular edition:1. It doesn't say who the translator was; and2. I found at least 3 typos in the book. Proofreading!I chose this edition because it had interesting cover art and wasn't full of "book club" questions and endless commentary like most of the others - but the typos were disappointing, and omission of the translator's name baffling to say the least. Those things aside, the story was thoroughly enjoyable, and before I'd finished I was already wanting to read it again. Highly recommended - but try a different edition.

The book "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne is a decent book. It is very slow in the beginning and has annoying old words. As the story progesses it gets a little better, but still not very good. The book is about a guy (Phileas Fogg) who bets he can make it around the world in 80 days. The book is just a boring account of the stuff he does. This book is very slow and boring and is not recommended to read unless you need to.

In what is a very odd case of cognitive dissonance, the plot of the Jackie Chan movie (which bears very little resemblance to the original here) actually makes more sense than the book. However, this is an entertaining travelogue with wacky characters and a crazy plot. Think of it as the "classics" version of a non-sensical thriller.

Although I like the premise--going around the world. However, it felt more like Verne portraying England as amazing and everywhere else...not. This includes showing barbaric rituals and getting into fights as soon as he sets foot on US soil.

I think that might be the only thing I got out of this book: England rocks, English colonies, better than non English colonies but not as good as England itself...and America...really lame.

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)A couple of years ago, when I did a write-up of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the "CCLaP 100" essay series, I heard from a number of his fans that part of the reason I found it rather lackluster was because of the free but ancient translation I had read, and that Verne is one of those cases where it really pays to seek out and even purchase the most recent translations that you can find. And that's because it's only been in literally the last 20 or 30 years, since genre work has really started gaining academic respect, that we've even wanted to go back and explore the beginnings of things like science-fiction or crime novels, and to apply a scholarly eye to such original material; but for a century before that, the dozens of fantastical titles put out by someone like Verne were considered by most to be the literary version of throwaway kiddie shows, pumped out quickly and cheaply to soon part an adolescent from his allowance money at the corner drugstore on a Saturday afternoon, and usually translated on the fly by overworked copyeditors who could care less if they were successfully capturing the subtleties of the original text.So I was glad to recently come across Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics by Jules Verne, a new collection of some of his most famous novels, edited and translated by the quite obvious slavish fan and full-time scholar Frederick Paul Walter, put out in a plain but professional oversized edition and containing all the books' original illustrations. And indeed, as I learned while reading through these 'Anglicized' new translations (i.e. they feature standard measurements and Fahrenheit temperatures), Verne's work at its best contained a kind of dry humor and political awareness that we in the English-speaking world rarely equate with the French speculative pioneer, with dialogue that's not nearly as histrionic as we've come to think of it in books like these, which to be fair really were pumped out originally on a fairly quick basis mostly for the amusement of children and the working class, a series of 54 novels known as the "Extraordinary Voyages" that publisher Jules Hetzel built an entire little commercial empire around, and just like today with most of the duo's revenue coming not from the books themselves but rather the lucrative traveling stage adaptations that were often made of them. And in fact, a full reading of Verne's entire oeuvre remains a personal challenge that I will only tackle much later in life if at all, so I decided not to read even the full five tales collected here, and especially like I said since I had already read 20,000 Leagues and didn't relish the thought of slogging through the entire thing again.So instead I read just two of the titles in this collection, starting with 1864's Journey to the Center of the Earth, one of Verne's first speculative tales after first being an opera librettist for years, while lying to his father the whole time and claiming that he was establishing a fine career in Paris as a young urban lawyer. And indeed, this early thriller shows off what I consider one of the modern main weaknesses of Verne's work, no matter how good the translation; that many of the fanciful scientific theories he proposed in his books have turned out over the decades to be just flat-out wrong, which means that we no longer have the ability to enjoy his work in the same way his contemporary audience did. (Don't forget, readers in the 1800s thought of Verne not so much as a sci-fi author but more like Michael Crichton, a brilliant futurist writing day-after-tomorrow tales about what life would really be like for their children.) Essentially the tale of an eccentric German professor, his nephew assistant and their silent Icelandic guide, as they literally climb down a volcano and discover a vast continent-sized system of caves below the Earth's surface, complete with their own bodies of water and rainclouds, it's hard not to roll one's eyes when watching our heroes stumble across forgotten dinosaurs and house-sized mushrooms, or ride a lava eruption back out to the surface at the end as if they were Victorian surfers; although the story definitely has its charms as well, especially when thinking of it now as pure fairytale fantasy, and with there being lots to enjoy in the cartoonish stereotypes that come with each of our various characters.Ah, but then after that, I skipped straight to the last story in this collection, and undoubtedly the most famous of Verne's career as well, 1873's Around the World in Eighty Days, which has been made into high-profile films several times now over the years, and which turned out to be a much better reading experience. Basically a gentle satire of British stiff-upper-lip determinism in the height of their Empire years, it starts with a group of upper-class gentlemen at a private London club discussing the latest innovations in world travel, with the reclusive and unflappable Phileas Fogg quietly insisting to his peers that a globe-spanning trip could now be realistically accomplished in a flat 80 days, even wagering what today would be two million dollars on the deal and agreeing to leave on such a journey that very night, armed with nothing but an overnight bag and his loyal French butler. And thus starts a rollicking adventure that indeed takes us around the world, spiced up by a British P.I. in Raj India who mistakes Fogg for a fugitive bank robber and tries to trip up his plans the whole rest of the way, and with the incredible journey involving such details as an elephant ride across central Asia, a sudden alliance with Chinese acrobats, a deliberately planned mutiny on a British sea vessel, a shootout with Native Americans on a train ride across the American Midwest, and a whole lot more. (Although let it be noted that the original book features no hot-air balloons, an invention of Hollywood that has become a famous trope of its own by now.)And in fact, I'm sure that a big reason why this succeeds so much more than Journey to the Center of the Earth is that, unlike the outdated speculative nature of the former, Eighty Days is a faithful and now historical look at just what it was like to really pull off world travel in the late 1800s, the first time in history it became commercially viable for anyone besides pirates and explorers to even do so. (And indeed, just a year before Verne wrote his novel, Thomas Cook led history's very first trip around the world designed specifically for tourists, only in their case taking seven months to complete instead of Verne's three.) And that makes the book charming and fascinating instead of eye-rolling, and especially when adding Verne's astutely funny comments regarding imperial aspirations, and of the self-satisfyingly civilized way the British liked to think of themselves during the height of the Victorian Age. (Unlike his reputation in later movies, much of the humor in the original book comes from the conservative, adventure-hating Fogg maintaining such complete composure in the face of such globetrotting chaos, spending the majority of his 80-day trip not enjoying the scenery but playing an endless series of card games with his fellow steamship and railroad passengers.) And that's a delight to read about even today, no matter how dated the actual mechanics of the story itself. (And in fact, gonzo journalists have been recreating the trip in a period-faithful way almost since the publication of the book itself, from an 1889 newspaper reporter to most recently comedian Michael Palin, just a few years ago for a BBC television mini-series.)So it was nice, I admit, to see what all these Verne fans were talking about, as far as the surprising loveliness of his original texts, that for so long have been hidden from us English speakers by shoddy translations; but also like I said, I'm not sure just how much of a general interest I have in Verne even with the new translations, making a sampler like this nearly perfect for the casual fan. It comes highly recommended, but be prepared for it to be one of those volumes you read in little doses here and there for years to come.Out of 10: 9.1

It was a fun read, but the presentation of Mormons is completely inaccurate and misleading.

Loved the audio for this - read by the wonderful Jim Dale. Such a great classic tale!

I adore this book. It is so delightful. How is it I have never read this book until now? How is it that Jules Verne was, until now, only an author mentioned in Back to the Future that I'd never read?

At no point does Phileas Fogg or Passepartout get in an air balloon. Lies, all lies.

I really enjoyed this book. The prose has a lovely flow to it.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've read this book. Every time the adventure is just as fresh and fun and I still hold my breath waiting to see if he'll make it in time. It's a classic for good reason.

Reading this as an adult, I realise how oddly written it is. Most of it is told at such a high level that critical scenes are reported to the reader rather than shown. As a result the pace rips along. Sometimes I wanted Verne to slow down and give me more detail, but he never does; everything is sacrificed to pace. It's story story story and you're slightly isolated from the characters. Which is interesting because the characters are all isolated in some way by a lack of communication; Passepartout doesn't tell Fogg about Fix's true identity, Fix isn't who he says he is, Aouda doesn't tell Fogg about her feelings and Fogg hardly says a word to anyone. A most strange book and thoroughly enjoyable.

Probably a good book for kids, but reading it for the first time as an adult it really doesn't do it. It is SO cartoonish and the characters so outlandish that I stopped after about 40 pages.

Phileas Fogg is that among that special breed of eccentric British men that were such a fixture of Victorian England. At his club he is challenged to race around the world in 80 days -- in an era where transportation was a scosh...unreliable. Accompanied by his incredibly resourceful servant Passepartout he accepts the challenge. The book chronicles his adventures. It's a remarkable journey full of action, suspense, and absurd comedy. And of course, that comical Vistorian xenophobia -- though doubtless it is more humorous for the reader than it was in international business relationships. Focused on his goal, and only his goal, Fogg does his level best to bring England with him, and not experience even a trace of other cultures. That alone is worth the price of admission.

A version of Around the World in 80 Days done as a French language textbook reader with English introduction and notes. Useful for someone like me who loves the story and has only moderate skill in French

This novel is light and entertaining for the most part. A delightful romp around the world, some fantastical adventures, all in the company of Philias Fogg and his valet, Passepartout. Let's see, a maiden snatched from being sacrificed, opium dens in China, daring adventures with Indians in the United States......quite a busy journey. The characters are all stereotyped by ethnicity, even if tongue-in-cheek, and the end was predictable from almost the beginning. It was okay.

Great fun to read, although the cover is incorrect (showing camels). Interesting to note because the Barnes and Noble book jackets talks about the "wrongness" of the balloon in the Fifties film version. Fast paced, full of action, and why did I not read it years ago!

Verne's tale of a 19th century Englishman's travels around the world is most notable for its depiction of local cultures now far gone. Often quaint, sometimes humorous and occasionally a bit too dated for the modern reader. Hardly a great work, but still a fun read.

When you are faced with the challenge, that no other man has been able to accomplish, will you not do your best to? If most of your fortune was at stake will you not strive to win no matter what the cost? Or are the other things that are more important than the task at hand? The book "Around the world in 80 days" by Jules Verne, is a novel that teaches something valuable that everyone should know. One man by the name of Phileas Fogg, is a wealthy man who seems to contain no emotions, a person of precision and accuracy. Because of a single bet, he must travel around the world in 80 days time, placing most of his fortune to win. With him is his new servant Passepartout a frenchman. Passepartout thought his master was a man of no feeling, yet in the end, he has seen what a kind gentleman Mr. Fogg truly is. Throughout the journey Mr. Fogg had saved a lady named Aouda, even if it were to slow down his journey he had to make sure she would be safe in Hong Kong, where she will never be in danger again. Also Passepartout has needed help over and over, yet Mr. Fogg never fails to come to his aid. Through and through helping others, and making sure they were well, was always the most important thing in this book even if the bet was to be lost. Now what do you think? Don't you think that, caring for others is important? In everyday life sometimes we get so into the fact that we have to reach a certain place for example, that we bump into people and just keep on going, without knowing if that person was okay. This book is I think my favourite from the author Jules Verne. I recommend it to anyone, pick up this classic and just enjoy!

As I recall this book was a lot of fun! Oddly enough I have yet to see either of the movies, but the original Mike Todd one is "in my queue." Because of my lack of interest in "hard science fiction" it's the only Jules Verne book I've read, but it appears he was a good storyteller based on that.

a great adventure story about one Englishman's journey around the world at a time when only train and ships were available as means of transport.

Good book, fun (if long...) movie. Will he make it? It's how it is actually done that makes it a hoot.