Customer Reviews

Around the World in 80 Days (Classic Fiction)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I can't believe that a 130+ year old book translated to English was good enough to keep me up half the night but this brilliant old gem did. The story features the height of late 1800 steam technology and a couple of heros who want to circumnavigate the earth in 80 days to win a bet. The characters are surprisingly likable and the action is just GREAT. Put this at the top of the queue for great free reads and you will get a wonderful easy read and a brilliant view of the world.

The story is about an eccentric Englishman named Phileas Fogg who makes a twenty thousand pound bet with five of his rich country club friends to travel around the world in eighty days with his trusty servant Passepartout a Frenchman. Along the way they have to overcome many obstacles. Fogg spends most of his fortune overcoming these obstacles and if they don't win the bet he will be ruined. There are some things however that even money can't overcome and several times Fogg is faced with a moral decision that if he pursues the right thing to do will significantly set him back on time.

Their travels take them through England, Paris, the Suez Canal, Egypt, India, Hong Kong, Japan, America, and Ireland. In India they rescue a princess who stays on with them throughout the rest of their journey and a love interest grows between her and Fogg. There is also another subplot involving a bank robbery in England where 55 thousand pounds have been stolen, and Fogg is considered to be the main suspect. A detective Fix is assigned to follow Fogg and to arrest him once he sets foot on English territory.

This book seems to be split into two parts. During the first part of the book when things are going smoothly the servant Passepartout seems to be the main character. At each port Fogg stays in his cabin and just focuses on the next leg of the trip while Passepartout ventures out and gives you a description of the land. It would seem a shame to travel all around the world and not pause to take in any of the sights as Fogg does. I found most of these early chapters pretty mundane and uneventful.

The subplot with Fix at times becomes annoying, and it isn't until they are all working towards the same goal, that this line of the story improves. I also found the exchange rate between dollars and pounds confusing at times. The pound must have been about four or five times greater than the dollar at the time this story was written. Fogg leaves England with around twenty thousand pounds and spends it seems over a hundred thousand dollars on the trip.

Later on as the story progresses and things start to go wrong the focus changes over to Fogg. Passepartout still does some heroic things, but Fogg takes charge and shows some redeeming qualities. The pace of the story quickens and becomes more enjoyable with a few skirmishes taking place in India and America. Fogg seems a different person upon returning to England, and his life is changed forever.

My wife has a framed poster that hangs on one of our walls with a collage of all of the movies that have won the best picture of the year award. "Around The World In Eighty Days" won the award in 1956, and the picture is represented in the collage with the main character Phileas Fogg and his trusty servant Passepartout taking a balloon flight. Based on this picture for years I always assumed the book was about a trip in a balloon around the world. I was surprised then to find out once I finally got a chance to read the actual book that they travel by boat, train, car, sled, and even elephant, but that they never travel by balloon. It turns out that the most memorable scene from the movie was made up by the director and added on to the story. The director seemed to have come to same conclusion that I did, that the written story itself was very good, but I was expecting something a little more.

The book was written in 1873. Jules Verne the author is a Frenchman. In this day and age it was pleasing to see both England and America looked upon in such a favorable light. Englishmen were portrayed as noble and Americans were portrayed as wild and adventurous.

I think this book is a superior book because it is full of action. This book is about a man named Mr. Phileas Fogg, and his faithful servant, Passepartout, that wager a bet that They can travel the whole world in eighty days stopping at Suez via Mont Cenis and Brindisi, then to Bombay, then Calcutta, Hong Kong, Japan (Yokohama), San Francisco, New York, back to London, all within eighty days, and by steamboats, and trains. However, a nosy detective, Detective Fix, tracks them down, and tries to arrest Mr. Fogg because he believes that Fogg stole fifty-five thousand pounds. As one may guess, this greatly detains Mr. Fogg, and it seems like he may not make the trip around the world after all. However, the Fix never seems to catch up with Fogg, and Fogg triumphs over most of the obstacles that come his way, like missing boats, missing trains, missing people, and Fogg even meets and rescues a beautiful Indian Princess called Aouda. However, Fix finally catches up to the detective, and everything seems lost for Fogg until Fix discovers that Fogg was not the robber, and Fogg is released. Even so, Fogg is one day late, and in doing so, misses the train that would have taken him to London precisely to win the bet. He ordered a special train, but even in doing so, still misses the bet...or so he thinks. The ending of the book is a very unexpected one. Read this book and find out!

This book is for a wet, cold winter day when you can curl up with a warm blanket and a cup of tea. It takes you on a wonderful, exciting trip around the world. The descriptions and word pictures make this a great book for all ages.

Around The World In Eighty Days is one of the shortest of Jules Verne's novels, and possibly the easiest for modern audiences to read. It is still enjoyable, even if you already know the ending. (And for extra fun, get the computer to pronounce Passepartout for you!) I've probably read it three times already since I was a kid.

This is simply the best book I have ever read. It's also a fun way to learn geography! From San Fransisco, California to Allahabad, India, follow the adventures of the tranquil, exact, phlegmatic, and laconic Phileas Fogg as, for a bet, he heads around the world in eighty days with his manservant Passapartout. On the way, he rescues the wife of a dead Rajah from an untimely cremation, is pursued by a detective who thinks he is a robber, bribes the crew of the ship Henrietta to mutiny, and still manages never to show emotion! It's a really fun book with adventure, romance, humor, and much more! A must read!

It is exceedingly unlikely that the critics will ever consider Jules Verne to be one of the world's great authors. And yet who ever came to a love of books and reading because of the works of Joyce and Faulkner ands their ilk? Not a damn soul. In fact, The Sound and the Fury and Ulysses can make you rue the day you learned to read. Meanwhile, there are literally millions of us who became avid readers and fell in love with books thanks to the magnificent adventure novels of Jules Verne.

The halls of academia may not overflow with earnest Literature majors studying his work and his prose stylings may not have transformed generations of authors, but, as one of the creators of Science Fiction, he is certainly one of the most influential authors of all time. And in terms of the pure innovation of his plot lines and the imagination and excitement of the stories he told, he is without peer.

But returning to this classic travel tale as an adult, the most pleasant surprise was just how funny a book this is. The phlegmatic Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, his own intrepid Sancho Panza, play off of each other to great effect. And the excitable and dedicated, though badly misguided, Detective Fix makes for an amusing foil for the heroes as he pursues them around the globe and very nearly loses Fogg his wager.

This is simply a grand adventure for readers of all ages.

GRADE: A+

Like many classics, this book is paced completely different than a modern novel. It takes forever to get going and even then, not all that much does happen. That to me was the biggest disappointment: Not all that much happens at all. Sure, they get in some trouble and have to fight their way through, but overall, it seems a two-week trip of my own is often more exciting than these 80 days around a world (to excaturate slightly). And to make matters worse, even when something does happen and people venture out to solve a problem, too much time is spent describing the people left behind waiting, and sometimes there is no description of the actual solution of the problem. But such is the style of the time, I guess.

I guess part of the problem is that the story deals with getting around the world as fast as possible, which leaves little time for anything but getting from a ship to the next train and so forth. Very little time is spent at all the different places, which would have offered so much potential story-wise, yet there is no time.

I still enjoyed reading it, in part because the way books were written at this time just amuses me (old English and all). And towards the end, the excitement does pick up a little bit. Not to modern-day-novel levels, but still, I enjoyed it.

You will like this book if you start reading with the right expectations.

This book is one of the few masterpieces out there. I have read many books and I stumbled upon this one and it was tremendus. A student who does not read in my class read this book and never put it down. I am no going o tell you a bit of the bok but i gurantee, if you read it you will be taking the trip with him. i felt exhausted when i finished the book, i felt as i were a character. take it from me this book is a certified masterpiece.

"Around the world in eighty days" is a great adventure novel to me. The stimulating plot of the story always makes me to pay full attention while I am reading. The unpredictable plot of the story is one of the elements that make this book a great adventure novel. The author is laudable for describing the journey that Mr. Fogg takes in the book so realistic. While flipping a chapter to another chapter, I can imagine that I am actually traveling around the world. The author describes the scenery of each country very well, in which I can imagine precisely how the country looks like even though I have never been there before. The author makes the plot of the story so thrilling that I will feel nervous while I am reading the book. I feel nervous because I am afraid that Mr. Fogg will unfortunately lose his wager and become a poor Englishmen. When I read up to the last few chapters, the tension that is created by the author expands rapidly. This is the key reason that I think "Around the world in eighty days" is a great adventure novel. After I finish reading the book, the tension is completely gone, in which my heart feel unburdened.