This month’s SBC recommended read is ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ by Jules Verne.
You can get the ebook for free here
You can get the audio book for free here
Content Warning: This book was written in the late 19th Century, as books reflect the time that they were written in and as a result you may find some of the attitudes or words used offensive.
Jules Verne was a French author and he published ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ in 1872 as part of a series called ‘Voyages Extraordinaires’. This series of adventure tales also included ’Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ and ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ which are also well worth a read (you can get them free on www.gutenberg.org as well). The stories were written to both entertain and educate, introducing their readers to places, animals, cultures and ideas from science. He is credited as being one of the first science fiction writers, though ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ is a straight up adventure story.
The story is that of a bet – can Phileas Fogg make it round the world in 80 days? It was originally published as a serial, as a result some readers actually believed it to be a real journey and real bets were placed on the outcome. It’s also been suggested that Verne’s description and accuracy of some of the railway and liner companies was so good that he was paid by them to have them feature. The book is an exciting adventure and a fascinating look at a time period very different to today.
The idea of an English man being lured into making a bet like this may seem silly but it was a common activity in gentlemen’s clubs in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tim FitzHigham recreated a series of bizarre bets from the time period for his Radio 4 Show The Gambler. You can hear the season 2 episodes here.
It’s not just men in the past that are willing to accept a silly wager, there are a few modern adventurers who have done an awful lot of work for the sake of a bet. Tim FitzHigham being one of them – he rowed across the English Channel in a bathtub (you can read about it in his book ‘All At Sea’. Comedian Tony Hawks made a habit out of it and has written a number of books about his adventures starting ‘Round Ireland with a Fridge’ when he made a bet that he could hitchhike round the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month. More recently Dave Gorman bet Danny Wallace that there were ‘loads’ of Dave Gorman’s around. Their adventures are charted in ‘Are You Dave Gorman?’
If reading about men doing stupid bets isn’t your idea of a good time then perhaps the real life adventures of 19th Century women might be more up your street. Mary Kingsley travelled around Africa , Isabella Bird travelled in the American Rocky Mountains or you can read about nurse Mary Seacole and her adventures helping soldiers in the Crimean War. Again if you do choose to read these remember that attitudes and acceptable vocabulary have changed a lot.
If you are inspired to travel yourself then you can do it virtually. Why not;
- Visit the British Museum in London and view their collections
- Or explore heritage sites in Easter Island, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Scotland.
- Or you can take in the view from the Eiffel Tower
- For more things like this try https://artsandculture.google.com/
- Or you can try playing GeoGuesser, a free game that gives you clues and you have to work out where in the world you are (or download the GeoGuessr app).
