TV Obsessive
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Daniel: Last weekend, I finished reading the Penguin Classics Edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I posted an Instagram story about how much I enjoyed it and how sad I was now that the journey was over. Several friends asked me if it was a) any good and b) worth the time. I answered in the affirmative to both and was surprised by the vigorous certainty of my responses. So here I am, in a slightly more official context, telling you why you should read it, in five bullet points:
- This book is perfect for 2021. You can traverse the globe without the anxieties of pandemic travel or risking catastrophic weather conditions. You can stay home and safely dive in.
- If you are anything like me—a smartphone wielding human surrounded by too many screens—you might not have the lengthiest attention span. If so, this book is perfect for you. It was originally published in a serialized format, so its chapters are both concise and gripping. They start and finish a single adventure while still advancing the larger narrative of the overall story.
- The prose is beautiful. The writing is poetic, funny, and thought-provoking, and the translation is fantastic. After finishing a chapter, you’ll look over at the next chapter and see a title like “A Drowned Continent” which either compels you to keep reading or excites you about the prospect of reading again later.
- My body believes this is a good book. As I read the last five chapters, my skin was covered in chills, and in the final chapter, I shed a few tears. I sat frozen in my chair, eyes still wet, skin vibrating, feeling like I had just been on a long, exciting, complicated journey that ended with a island of certainty in an ocean of questions.
- On that note, this book implicitly asks the reader many questions: What would you do if you were taken against your will on an undersea adventure? Would you try to escape, or would you lean into the journey and accept it?
At present, the immediate question is: will you cling to familiar ground, or will you dive into the most exhilarating adventure of your life?
Illustration by Stephen Rothwell, 2017
Should you choose the latter, I can assure you: you will miss home, and you will question whether you made the right decision. But you will meet many fascinating people. You will see a world of wonderful and terrible things. And if you persist, you will eventually find yourself on a familiar shore but be warned: you may not recognize yourself upon your return.
