[JenB]

Really? Around the World is one my mom read aloud to us. I remember listening to her describe all the fabulous places.... I thought it was hilarious. Haven't read it in a while and I'm wondering if it may have been a very dry satire. Phineas Fogg and his servant (can't spell the name) were really almost cariactures...

[RosieCotton]

Mom read Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island and (if I remember right) 2000 Leagues to us...I think I read Around the World on my own and didn't really care for the characters. As I said, I probably need to re-read it.

Whereas...I can STILL remember how fascinated I was by process the people in Mysterious Island went through in attempting to make gun powder...and how the dog learned to climb ladders...and how the engineer made a magnifying glass with two watch faces held together with clay, with water in between and used it to make a fire...and how one of them had malaria and the whole mystery of how they were helped whenever things seemed to be hopeless. And it must have been fifteen years ago or more when Mom read it.

I dunno...the whole idea of being stranded somewhere has always been interesting to me, and the fact that they started out with nothing but what they were wearing was a still more interesting twist. Didn't have so much as a knife at first.