We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

This year book bingo has a ‘Underground’ category–and I’ve been meaning to actually go back and read more Verne. Seemed like a great chance to check out Journey to the Center of the Earth!

In a nutshell, it’s a quintessential Jules Verne adventure. A student and professor find an old manuscript purporting to describe a path to the very center of the Earth… and off they go to Snæfellsjökull (Icelandic is such a lovely language) and down into the Earth.

From that, it’s one adventure after another. Down caves, running out of food and water, nearly dying–and all manner of completely scientifically improbable findings along the way.

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

I think the biggest difficulty in this book is probably entirely tied up with the fact that it’s 160 years old. It’s just written in a very different style. People just … don’t talk like that. But it does make it feel amusingly old-timey, which I actually like. (I wonder how much of that is the translation?)

Worth a read. Going to have to read a few more of these!