Book Review: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Right here you'll find my video review of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (forgive my t-shirt and crazy hair!) by Jules Verne Keep reading for all the deets of what I talk about in the video!

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Ok. first off. what's all this I'm talking about book club?? That's right! I joined my first book club! (can you believe it's my first one?) It's called Delicious Reads, and the lady behind it (Kelly) is the sweetest ever. This book club is no ordinary book club. It's crazy intricate and amazing! And they blog about the whole thing. Go check it out. You'll get seriously amazing ideas for your next book club!

They've already blogged about the food (like I talk about in my video). Go check out the post HERE.

I gave this book 3.5/5 stars based on the Delicious Reads rating scale (See the scale here). In other words, there were some parts I really loved and some parts I had a harder time with (they moved a little too slow). But overall I'm REALLY glad I read it. I challenged myself hugely with this book, and I'm so glad I did!

“The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature.” - Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Here's a little more about my two favorite parts that I talk about in the video

1. Stuck in the iceberg in the South Pole (Part 2, Chapter 13-16). They travel to the South Pole on the Nautilus and Captain Nemo decides it a good idea to go farther through the ice than they've ever gone before to see if he can get right to the Pole. Eventually they get stuck in the ice on all sides, and almost run out of air as they are trying to free the Nautilus. It's very exciting! (And I'm pretty sure Captain Nemo is nuts).

2. The Arabian Tunnel (Part 2, Chapter 5): This is what that tunnel is called! It is a tunnel that Captain Nemo secretly knows about that goes from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. This will allow them to get to the Mediterranean Sea quickly instead of having to go all the way around the Cape of Good Hope (I would never have remembered all these names without googling it...) I thought this part was awesome! How cool would it be if something like this existed!

3. I don't talk about this part in the video, but I also really like where they visit Atlantis. It was the most fanciful part of the book, but it had all of us in book club wondering if Atlantis really could be real. It reminded me of the book I read recently called Atlantia by Ally Condie.

4. I knew this book was about a submarine, but I'm not going to lie... at the beginning of the book, I was really hoping it was actually a narwhal. :)



This is the abridged version of the book that I read (and it's under $10 at Barnes and Noble) *(Affiliate Link) Like I said in the video, there are SO many different versions, but I really liked the one I read. It was abridged (which was a plus), and it had little footnotes to explain some of the more complicated terminology

I read this Jules Verne book for the "A book more than 100 years old" category of my 2015 reading challenge (it was published in 1870). So your challenge is now to pick up a book over a hundred years old (either this book or another classic) and challenge yourself to finish it! You can do it! I believe in you!