Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

A mysterious slip of parchment containing coded Norse runes falls from an ancient book and lands at the feet of the only person in the world with both the intelligence to decipher it and the insanity to act upon its message:

Descend into the crater of Snaefellsjökull, over which the shadow of Scartaris falls before the kalends of July, bold traveller, and you will reach the centre of the Earth. This I have done. Arne Saknussemm

These words, written in the 16th century by an Icelandic alchemist, are all the prompting Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an expert in mineralogy, needs to drag his more than reluctant nephew Axel on 'the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century'.  Yes, the Professor fully intends to go down a crater of a volcano in Iceland and follow Saknussemm to the centre of the Earth.

Many of us read this tale by Jules Verne when we were children.  For me, it was the very first fiction book that I read that I actually liked, and I liked it a lot.  Although the reader is supposed to identify with the pragmatic Axel, I was much more drawn to Uncle Lidenbrock. He had vision, he had learning, he used reason to solve problems, and he refused to let the doubts or prejudices of other to sway him from his course.  

The difference between us is that I prefer to have vision, learning, reason and resolve in the comfort of my own living-room.  But that is what books can give us: the means to adventure safely through dangerous places without ever leaving our armchairs.  And we can go to places that don't exist, never existed, or will never be attained by ordinary mortals.  Journey to the Centre of the Earth certainly fits the bill.

Set in 1863, the new-fangled technology of chronometers and Ruhmkorff coils mentioned in the books must have seemed a miracle to its readers.  Of course, the intervening 150 years have made the new-fangled old-fangled.  So the Professor had a watch and a flashlight, so what?  

There is something antiquated about Verne's story too.  A lot of narration and explanation intersperses the action, for example, making the story slow by modern standards. But to give the author his due, he gives riddles to solve, dangers to overcome, there is rising action and he does get the reader out into the countryside, out into the ocean, up into the mountains and down into the depths of the Earth.

In amongst all the words and explanations, there is this passage about fuel:

Thus were formed those huge beds of coal which, despite their size, the industrial nations will exhaust within three centuries unless they limit their consumption.

Here we are in the age of peak-oil, and there was Verne thinking about something like it all those years ago.

I enjoyed re-reading this book, although nothing will replace the pleasure I felt the first time around.  Well worth the effort both times.

Lollingdon Downs by John Masefield

Ever since I was old enough to go out and look at the night sky, I have gone out and looked at the night sky.  I do it almost every night, noting how the constellations rise and fall with the seasons, how the planets wander in and out of the spangled starscape, how the moon waxes and wanes. Lo! there is Orion the hunter and his faithful dog in summer, and now Scorpio, his bane, in winter; and all the time the Southern Cross wheels about an unseen axis.

At the time of writing, Venus is riding high in the sky as the evening star.  I think of Tolkien and his invented mythology of Middle Earth.  There is Eärendil the mariner in his heavenly ship, and the silmaril bound to his brow and shining with the mingled lights of the two trees. 

And at such times, I think of what it might be like to roam the aether, sailing on invisible tides, the solar winds in my hair, feeling in the rawest form the cosmogonic forces that have shaped us all.

I am not alone.  Tolkien got there before me, as did John Masefield, and the Silver Surfer.  I provide here an excerpt from Masefield's extended poem Lollingdon Downs.  Sometimes, I too wish that my soul might sail for a million years in such a fashion: no death, no tears.

I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.

If I could sail that nothing, I should cross 
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing, 
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss 
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing, 

And rage into a sun with wandering planets 
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed, 
See his last light upon his last moon's granites 
Die to a dark that would be night indeed. 

Night where my soul might sail a million years 
In nothing, not even Death, not even tears.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

"In the latter days of July in the year 185-, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways - who was to be the new bishop?"

And who was to be the new bishop? An outsider, so it happened, and thus the equilibrium of the little corner of the world that is Barsetshire is thrown off balance.  New people with new ideas arrive on the scene; feathers are ruffled as a new order is proposed, if not imposed.

Barchester Towers reacquaints us with some of the characters first introduced in The Warden.  There is the aged cleric Septimus Harding, his two daughters, and his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly.  Added to the cast are the weak-willed Bishop Proudie and his domineering wife; the conniving Obadiah Slope, the bishop's chaplain; the shy and scholarly Mr Francis Arabin; and the Stanhope siblings: the wastrel artist Bertie, the match-making Charlotte, and the femme fatale Madeline, better know as La Signora Vesey Neroni.

The action revolves around two poles.  Firstly, there is Eleanor, Rev. Harding's daughter, widowed young and the possessor of a considerable income left by her late husband, and she soon becomes the apex of several love triangles. Secondly, there is the politics of the Barchester diocese as the posts of the Warden of Hiram's Hospital and, later, the Dean of the cathedral become vacant; and as Mr Slope and Mrs Proudie go to war over which of them has control of the bishop.

At about 500 pages, Barchester Towers is a much vaster undertaking than its slender predecessor, but just as enjoyable. Trollope has again created a cast of very real and compelling characters. It is a testament to his skill as writer that, whether they be goodies or baddies, or whether they have major or minor roles, the reader is able to care for all the people on the page.

Whereas The Warden dealt with a good and humble man having a crisis of conscience, Barchester Towers is more concerned with manners.  Whilst the latter book was Trollope's most popular, it could be argued that the former is the superior work of art.  As for the sheer joy of reading a good book, they both have their own charms and are as equally entertaining, which is to say very entertaining. Why not read them both?