Before I spent too much energy trying to decide on a book, I went to my town's Labor Day weekend festival with a friend. (People from Berkley: it's basically like Berkley Days, but for Labor Day!) There was a used book sale going on in one area, and books were ALL $1 each! Ahh! I grabbed two mysteries that seemed interesting, a Kathy Reichs book, and then I happened to notice sitting there a copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's a very nice hard cover, with a built-in bookmark ribbon, and by the inscription it was evidently a Christmas present for someone named Connor in 2009 from his aunt and uncle. I kind of really like knowing who it used to belong to! I hope that Connor at least read the book, and willingly donated it to the sale. If he lost it and it somehow wound up donated to a book sale, I'd feel bad.
Anyway!
Yet again, Jules Verne's writing style kind of disappointed me. It was nowhere near as bad as getting through Tolkein, but it definitely did drag every now and then. Some of it - the high formality of the language, for example - could be the fault of the translator. There were definitely a few sentences that I had to read a few times in order to understand. (My beginner's knowledge of German could imagine the different grammatic structure of the German sentence, and then imagine the translator struggling between a literal translation which probably felt more "true" to him, vs a more casual English sentence structure that reads easier but is perhaps a technically less accurate translation.)
I ended up reading this a lot more quickly than I normally would have. When I read the first few chapters, it was at home on my couch as usual... and I kept struggling to stay awake, due in part to my odd fatigue all summer long, the slow/formal language of the book, and how comfy my couch is. But before too long, I got an internship with The Advocacy Project in downtown DC! I decided to take the Metro rather than attempt to drive during the morning rush hour, and boy oh boy does that ~40 minutes each way 3 days a week make for a lot of great reading time! One day, there was a 20 minute delay on the Metro, and rather than get all frazzled about being late to work I simply smiled and read for an extra 20 minutes that morning.
When I saw the 2008 movie with Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson, I either heard or figured (or both) that it was quite different from the book. But, wow, it was REALLY different. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I remember them doing a lot of running from dinosaurs and something about a ground that was over a bottomless pit, and said ground was very fragile and dangerous to walk on. Not to mention that they spent the majority of the movie actually in the center of the Earth.
But the book? They didn't even enter the extinct volcano (from several thousand feet ABOVE the surface) until HALFWAY THROUGH the book. Then, while they certainly spent several months and a good portion of the book very deep beneath the surface, they actually never make it to the center of the Earth! The book is definitely more about the journey TO, while the movie is about the adventures IN. So, that was definitely a surprise. Of course I figured that the book would be slower and a little less action-packed, simply because of the time period it was written in, but I guess I also expected some of the scenes that I remembered from the movie to be in the book.
Despite the differences, I did enjoy the book. I don't think it quite earned a place on my list of favorites, again mainly because of the formal language, but I'm definitely glad that I read it! It also amused me that I read the bulk of the book on the subway, which averages about 4 stories below ground. Here are my heroes several hundred leagues under the Earth, and I'm suffering from the pressure on my ears less than one thousandth of a league under the surface!
Coming up next in the challenge: probably a book chosen for me by a friend. Last night at my crochet meetup, we talked a lot about books and I complained about how many difficult books I've read this year. My friends had a looooot of good recommendations for me! I'm excited to read some of them. I'm also planning on reading The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which I discovered on Goodreads and am very intrigued by. Also, I started watching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell on Netflix, and I'd reeeeeally like to read the book! I got the audiobook on Audible (woo free Gold subscription trial!), which I think will be great on the Metro because I'll be able to let my eyes rest but still get through my book. If you had told me this time last year that I'd be flying through much more than one book per month, I'd have been pretty surprised!
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