Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne, 1869)

At my childhood home last weekend I was updating my parent's computer and waiting for installations when I picked a book at random from the shelf from a hardback collection I had not taken when I moved out. This Classic Adventures series was a fortnightly collection that I got when I was 10 years old, according to the date I've written in the 'This book belongs to...' section at the front. I remember reading Little Women and The Prisoner of Zenda, but none of the other 20 or so books. All are considered classics, and I think I'll appreciate them more as an adult reader, as I've brought them all back to my flat with me.

I polished off Twenty Thousand Leagues... within a week as I found it really enthralling, at least for the most part. I don't know how the French original reads, but the translation (in this abridged version, though how abridged I've no idea) is witty and uses some wonderful language. The book follows M. Arronax, his man Conseil, and Canadian harpooner Ned Land as they are taken aboard Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine and travel 20,000 leagues around the world - not 20,000 leagues beneath the sea as the title implies. 

Those are pretty much the only characters found in the bulk of the book, although the first several chapters explain how Arronax and co end up on Nautilus when they are washed overboard the ship that is tracking a mysterious leviathan... which turns out to be Captain Nemo's submarine. The novel is then set almost entirely aboard Nautilus and follows in a rather episodic manner, the adventures of the ship and the wonderment that Arronax experiences along the way. There are encounters with unusual sea creatures, explorations of shipwrecks, a visit to Atlantis, and a gripping sequence when the vessel finds itself trapped under the Antarctic ice. 

The enigmatic Captain Nemo and his mute, nameless crew are a mystery to Arronax and his reader, and I liked that there was no easy (or any!) explanation as to Nemo's background or why he has chosen to renounce the physical world for a life under the seas. I enjoyed the Nautilus' adventures, and found the descriptions of life under the waves fascinating, in much the same way as Moby Dick was interesting in it's depiction of the life and times of whales. A pleasure to read then, and a cracking adventure. I look forward to more of the Classic Adventures series.