Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

In my childhood home there was a sky-blue wooden bookcase, and in that bookcase there was a crimson canvas hardback edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.  Dean and Son was the publisher.  It's just one of those things: the number of times I picked out that book, opened it up, looked at it but never read it. 

The book, the bookcase and those times are all gone now, but the works of Jules Verne lives on in its various incarnations - in this case a Penguin eBook. Ones and zeroes instead of canvas and cardboard, LEDs and pixels instead of paper and ink.  Still, I've finally read it now.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea was first published in serial form in 1869-70.  I am sure most readers will know the story is about the adventures of three men who are rescued from a shipwreck by the mysterious Captain Nemo and spend several months as captive guests aboard his technologically-advanced submarine.  In that time, they do a lap of the Pacific Ocean, cross the Indian Ocean, traverse the length of the Atlantic from  Spain to Antarctica and back again - twenty thousand leagues.

Although not prescient of technology such as submarines and aqualungs (they had already been invented, albeit in a primitive form), Verne very convincingly imagines their applications as both weapons of war and as the means of scientific exploration, and there are ample demonstrations of the two throughout the book.

While the various episodes in the story are interesting or exciting in their own way, too often does Verne allow didactic interludes concerning marine natural history to intrude on the story.  These often take the form of lists of the names of animals and plants and their taxonomy.  In the end, they seemed to take up space on the page without providing much understanding or argument about the subject matter.  As a result, while Verne has very successfully turned the science fact of his day into a work of speculative fiction,  he is not nearly as successful at imparting the sense of adventure he achieved in Journey to the Centre of the Earth or Around the World in Eighty Days