20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Jules Verne

Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the “monster” turns out to be a giant submarine, commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, by whom they are soon held captive.

So begins not only one of the great adventure classics by Jules Verne, the ‘Father of Science Fiction’, but also a truly fantastic voyage from the lost city of Atlantis to the South Pole.

Captain Nemo is a fascinating character, and the Nautilus a wonderful sci-fi invention, I would love to travel the seas in it

The book is well written, with nicely described characters that you care about, including Nemo; the places and events in the book are similarly described well, making it easy to imagine yourself there. Despite being well written it can be difficult at times, to adjust to the older style of writing, which tends to be more wordy than that used by modern authors.

I like this book but the overall impression I was left with after reading it is that Jules Verne wanted to impress people with his knowledge of oceanic flora and fauna. The focus on that aspect of the book can get distracting and take you away from the storyline. If you can get past that, you’re probably going to enjoy the book.

Oliver Twist – The Book

I’m not sure I really need to give a precis of Oliver Twist, I’d guess that nearly all of you already know what it’s about, but I will for the sake of those few who don’t.

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist is a young orphan, barely into double figures, who runs away after suffering the tyranny of Mr Bumble the beadle and assorted others for too long. He makes his way to London, where he hopes to find a better life, and falls in with Fagin, The Artful Dodger and their gang of petty criminals and gets into trouble with the law.

He is rescued from that trouble by Mr Brownlow, a kindly old gentleman who takes an interest in him, before long though, Oliver is dragged back into the company of Fagin and the others, who wish to make him a criminal, for reasons you learn later on, and his friends must rescue him.

There’s a reason this book is still popular more than a century and a quarter after it was first released; the writing might be a little convoluted for this modern era, authors, myself included, tend to be a little more direct with their language now, but the characters are all so richly described that it’s a pleasure to read about even the bad guys. The dialogue is exceptional as well, whenever I want a reminder of how dialogue should be written, I take out my Dickens, he is, in my opinion, one  of the greatest – if not the greatest – English authors of all time.

I don’t think I can say a bad word about this novel, it’s only my perverse nature that keeps me from giving it the full five stars, although if I’m honest there are one or two instances where I feel as though Oliver’s encounters with certain people are a little too coincidental.

Overall I can only recommend this book to absolutely everyone who has ever learned to read, even if they only read it the once, so they can see how artful a novel can be.

Just writing this review makes me want to pick up the nearest copy so I can rejoin Oliver, Fagin, The Artful Dodger and even Bill Sykes and Nancy.

Westward Ho!

The house clearance and tidy-up continues, and I must confess that I am feeling a little like Harry, Ron and Hermione in The Order of the Phoenix as they struggled to clean up Sirius’ house; there’s so much to be done that it doesn’t seem as if I’m making any progress, though I know I am.

Today I was working on what has become the storage room, where many treasures, including a load more of my great-uncle’s art and some antique, and some interesting, books have been unearthed, and from which a lot of rubbish has been taken. The room looks significantly tidier but there remains a lot to do since it has now been organised into sections that include: take to the charity shop, sort through and decide on later, and, the biggest pile, to be disposed of (unfortunately this pile includes several pieces of furniture that aren’t all that easy to dispose of; I see a saw and a lot of effort in my future.

Since I am currently taking a break from being a house-elf I thought I would take the time to post a little something here and to get some work done on my novel.

As I mentioned in my last post about the family treasures, I found a book presented to my great-aunt when she was at school, it is in immaculate condition and here it is for you all to see.

Charles Kingsley

Set initially in Bideford in North Devon during the reign of Elizabeth I, Westward Ho! follows the adventures of Amyas Leigh (Amyas Preston), an unruly child who as a young man follows Francis Drake to sea. Amyas loves local beauty Rose Salterne, as does nearly everyone else; much of the novel involves the kidnap of Rose by a Spaniard.

Amyas spends time in the Caribbean sea and Venezuela seeking gold, and eventually returns to England at the time of the Spanish Armada, finding his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora, in the process; yet fate had blundered and brought misfortune into Amyas’s life, for not only had he been blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, but he also loses his brother Frank Leigh and Rose Salterne, who were caught by the Spaniards and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition.

I found several other books during my clearing up, 2 on information and advice of one sort or another from the first half of the 19th century and another on ghost and horror stories from the Victorian era; I was thinking I might treat you all to some excerpts in future posts.