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| Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Penguin Popular Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jules Peabody Verne
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £2.00
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £1.99 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 23436
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0140621393
EAN: 9780140621396
ASIN: 0140621393
Publication Date: September 27, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Little River Books dispatch daily from South Wales. Customer satisfaction is our guarantee.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Believable adventure August 30, 2006
An excellent and very easily readable adventure. As most novels from that era it is actually very realistic (to me it is more believable than aliens landing etc.)and left me feeling that if I followed the descriptions of the journey, I could have the same adventure. Almost like a travelog.The language is easy, the characters colourful and the events intrigueing so that you want to - and are able to - read it in one go.
Stick with the penguin translation: I had a quick look at others and they didn't seem as good
 Great entertaining read July 19, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm not really a fan of adventure stories or Jules Verne for that matter, but Journey to the Centre of the Earth was a very enjoyable read. I loved the extent of Verne's imagination, the thrill and suspense of the deep, unexplored underground of the earth, and most of all I enjoyed the humour in this book - Professor Lidenbrock is the enthusiastic scientist ready to plunge deep into the bowels of the earth, with his hesitant nephew, Axel, tagging along behind him. Of course, Axel goes down the volcano too, contemplating his uncle's sanity, and his hyperactive imagination obsessed with possible scenarios of disaster. Reads extremely quickly because it is so exciting and funny, make sure you get the Penguin Popular Classics version, as other editions might have a different translation.
 Unbelievable May 17, 2006
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a "Classic". It says so on the cover of my book. So now I wonder exactly what this means, because it's clear to me that it isn't an extraordinarily good book and it isn't exceptionally well written. In this case perhaps the "classic" label just indicates that the book is quite old and would have been ground-breaking in its time because it must have been one of the first sci-fi stories. It predates H G Wells' War of the Worlds (a far superior book in my opinion) by over 30 years. It deserves respect if only for this reason. However, the characters and the adventure are implausible - cartoonish even. You might object that scientific knowledge was more primitive then and the author shared the mistaken beliefs of his contemporaries. But I doubt that even in the mid-nineteenth century, anyone would have imagined it possible for example, for three men to hurtle up through a fissure from deep within the earth, right up to the surface, on a plume of lava (that is, molten rock!) for several hours on a wooden raft - even if the wood had fossilised or had changed into some sort of asbestos-like material. That's the sort of thing that might happen in a cartoon where, no matter how battered, beaten, suffocated, exploded and singed the characters get, they all live uninjured and happily ever after.
I'm surprised to see how many reviewers have given this book 5 stars. That's the highest recommendation that can be given here at Amazon and it implies that this is a very good book indeed. I think it's worth 3 stars: 1 for venerable old age and 2 for imagination.
Down to earth, yet not December 31, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There are some scenes that stay in my memory from this book. One of these is when the adventuring trio raft across an underground ocean and have to stay on a raft in the midst of a fight between giant nemesis sea 'dinosaurs'. Another is when the narrator thinks that he has lost his companions and his torch breaks so he is left in the dark miles underground thinking that he is forever lost. I truly felt the fear of being lost to its extreme when reading this. He does manage to find the professor and Hans, but the means are about as crazy as so much in this book, (which is a quaint thing about the book). I think Jules Vernes does the "dare to be bad" thing with the unlikely things that happen, but he might have taken this too far and actually ended up by being a little bit bad because of these totally impossible and unbelievable things that happen or things which the travellers survive for a happy ending, (such as being ejected up from miles underground through the vent of a volcano and surviving). This is probably the most enjoyable and visual adventure story that I have read, and actually, although the things that happen are hard to believe, this is slightly in dream territory, and Vernes clearly had an appreciation for geology and things. I did an A-level in geology, and every time that I was going to object to one of his suggestions he would then justify it. (One of these was that I objected that under the earth it would be far too hot to survive, but Verne justifies this by saying that the protagonists go underground in a tunnel made of granite and hence the temperature gradient doesn't effect them much. At least he know which parts to justify. This must be one of the earliest science fiction books, and is sort of geological science fiction. Also, one thing that I falsely objected to is that going to the centre of the Earth is a totally ridiculous idea for a science fiction story because it is so far-fetched, but in the story the adventurers only actually stay within the Earth's crust, which although deep, is only a tiny distance in geological terms. This made things a lot more realistic. Also the exciting atmosphere of Iceland prior to their 'breach' of Earth's crust stays in my memory. If you like the sound of it, read this book.
Given Enough Suspension of Disbelief, an Excellent Adventure March 12, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a high-adventure novel. A German scientist puts together an expedition to follow successfully in the tracks of a previous, attempt to reach the center of the Earth. In Verne's time, it was not known that the Earth had a molten core, and the nature of the core, while believed by many to be molten, was debated. The expedition encounters many unexpected creatures, land-forms, plants, and obstacles. The pace of the writing is very fast, in general, with a few digressions to explain scientific debates. The science in the novel is actually superior to the science of the film, as the dinosaurs of the book are more believable than those of the film. Definitely a fun read!By the way, I read the novel and watched the film at about the same time, and now realize that the film was only very loosely based on the Jules Verne novel. The premise remains intact: a scientist leads a small team in an attempt to retrace an earlier expedition to the Earth's center. However, the movie added several characters and plot-lines, rearranged many aspects of the "world" found within the Earth, and inserted a solid dose of comic relief not found in the novel. The film discarded an ongoing discussion of scientific theory between two characters (played by Mason and Boone in the film), possibly because their debate is now a moot point. If this film, as is, came out today, it would be blasted as being totally unfaithful to the novel. I wonder if that occurred when the film was released. Either way, it is still an interesting and entertaining film. However, please do not expect the film and the novel to be very similar.
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