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larsenc23 's review for:
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
I purchased this after the Titan submarine imploded above the Titanic in 2023 but didn't get around to reading it until months after the incident. Like a complete dope I purchased the Puffin Classics version of this book which was heavily abridged. Man am I disgusted with myself.
This was, in my mind, the pinnacle of adventure stories. I'm not a sci-fi reader at all and was not put off by Verne's stretching of the imagination for his story. A lot of the negative reviews would have been more positive had they read this abridged version that "has taken out the more arduous and dated bits of nineteenth-century science, and lists of underwater species, in order to clarify the main, thrilling adventure story". I doubt that those removed parts would have bothered me, as the similar sounding content did not bother me while reading Moby Dick. Someday, I will definitely need to buy the full unabridged version for the parts I missed but also to do better honor of this book in my private collection. This is up there with one of the best books I ever read. Captain Nemo is probably my all-time favorite character in literature.
This was, in my mind, the pinnacle of adventure stories. I'm not a sci-fi reader at all and was not put off by Verne's stretching of the imagination for his story. A lot of the negative reviews would have been more positive had they read this abridged version that "has taken out the more arduous and dated bits of nineteenth-century science, and lists of underwater species, in order to clarify the main, thrilling adventure story". I doubt that those removed parts would have bothered me, as the similar sounding content did not bother me while reading Moby Dick. Someday, I will definitely need to buy the full unabridged version for the parts I missed but also to do better honor of this book in my private collection. This is up there with one of the best books I ever read. Captain Nemo is probably my all-time favorite character in literature.