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The Mysterious Island |  | Author: Jules Verne
Publisher: Public Domain Books
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  11 reviews
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B000JMLBHU
Publication Date: April 1, 1998
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Fascinating August 31, 2010
Old Woman (Texas)
Jules Verne's Guide to Survival. I enjoyed the adventure. This is one classic you don't want to miss. Not only is it fun to read, but you might learn something as well. The next time I read it, and I fully intend to read this book again, I'm going to keep my laptop at my elbow so I can find pictures of some of the animals and plants mentioned. I'd especially like to know if their "horses" are real or make-believe.
Survival Manual June 23, 2010
Coolfire (Nevada)
A good and interesting story well told. Actually, the book is a tour-de-force of survival techniques. It is a proverbial field manual for survival on a semi-tropical island encapsulated within the framework of a novel, providing that one had the ability to recognize and identify all the plants and minerals found within its pages and had the ability to transform these into those uses identified by the author.
Verne's version of Robinson Crusoe June 11, 2010
T. Simons (Columbia, SC United States)
This is Jules Verne's attempt at writing a Robinson Crusoe / Swiss Family Robinson castaway story, with the twist that the five castaways crash-land a balloon and thus come to the island with almost nothing -- unlike Crusoe or the Swiss Family, the castaways here don't have a boat-full of resources, tools, etc., to fall back on, and have to make *everything* themselves, from the ground up, armed only with their knowledge of science and engineering. Since it always seemed to me that Crusoe and the Swiss Family cheated a bit by bringing so many tools and so forth along with themselves, I really enjoyed the more scientific focus, and this has now replaced Swiss Family as my answer to the "what one book would you want with you on a desert island?" question.
Parts of the novel drag a bit, but it's a Jules Verne novel so there's a good story here -- the Island has a mysterious unseen inhabitant, also, there are pirates, which is always awesome.
The main flaw is that this is based on the 1875 Kingston translation, which makes a fair number of edits on Verne's original -- for example, it changes some of the protagonists's names and removes some of Captain Nemo's anti-imperialist, anti-british rhetoric. There's a more accurate translation available for free in the Kindle store, so I'd recommend grabbing the accurate version instead (look for the edition where the engineer is named Cyrus Smith, rather than Cyrus Harding; Kingston reportedly felt "Smith" was a "gypsy name" and hence unsuitable for a heroic character. You can find that version in the kindle store here:The Mysterious Island)
Oh, yeah, Captain Nemo. This book is in some ways a sequel to Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas_, as well as to his _In Search of the Castaways_. The sequence isn't direct -- really more a case of cameo characters than a direct plot sequel to either book -- but you might want to read those two books first before picking this one up.
A great tale of friendship and surviving March 7, 2010
Jessss (Mountain)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was my first tread into Jules Verne. I was rewarded with a good read. The only complaint was that there was a lot of detail put into all the different mechanisms they had to make. However, it was still interesting to learn such things from the way to build many things from raw resources to how to create makeshift items to help with survival.
The story begins with 5 prisoners; an engineer, a sailor, a reporter, a servant, and a young man along with a very bright dog; traveling in a hot air balloon to escape imprisonment during the Civil War. They are thrown onto an island that isn't listed on any maps and well out of the way for any ships in the Pacific to go by. They even go on a short trip to a close but un-useful island to help a castaway. For four long years these escapees have to start from nothing to make themselves a civilized dwelling. They create everything from a house in granite rock and a garden and an animal farm to any mechanism they might need to create something to survive with. They spend their days working and building and creating all the necessities as well as some wants. They build two ships and at the last second when they fear death, they are saved. There are references to 20,000 leagues under the seas and captain Nemo as well as historical things.
The story is long but with all the details you learn not only to feel like you know the islanders but also enough to see their surroundings and feel their anxieties. There is adventure, camaraderie, pirates, survival, and many other things all wrapped up in this amazing classic.
 Hard to read in a number of ways February 7, 2010
J. Sutherland (portland OR)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this right after I got my Kindle. I don't care about the format or any of that, so no comments relating to that. There were several words the kindle dictionary didn't recognize, a little disappointing. I found the story somewhat entertaining, totally male of course, there isn't even a mention of females until near the end of the book when they are talking about Herbert bringing his wife back. Any group of men stranded on an island would definitely have some sort of conversation about the lack of females! Also the mindset described (regarding killing every animal in sight without a thought) is a good reminder of why our planet is in so much trouble. I found that aspect pretty sad actually. The deference that everyone showed to the "captain" was pretty silly. Finally, it was so implausible that it got boring.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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