Text and image by Nora Vasconcelos
Loving traveling as I do, the first book that caught my attention by this writer was Around the World in 80 Days. This book took me to travel along Phileas Fogg around all those exotic places that this English character visited in order for him to win a exotic bet place back in London.
After I read this book, many year ago, I’ve watched several film and TV adaptations of the novel, from cartoons for children, to a miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan. But in all cases, the deepest and clearer images of Fogg’s adventures remain in my mind from the lines I read in my childhood.
I took, however, some time for me to come back to the Jules Verne path, and I haven’t left it ever since. It was so that recently I read From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel Round the Moon.
What I liked the most of the first one was Verne’s solution to set a man in the Moon, and I was amazed with all the calculations and theories the characters develop before they were able to calculate the exact length of the devise that will “fire” the spaceship, and particularly how Verne came up with the place where this spaceship would be launch.
However, I have to say that I was absolutely taken by the second story, Round the Moon, due to the clarity and strength that the French writer imprinted in his characters once they realized that they might never come back to the Earth, or even touch the Moon.
While reading these books, I even could picture Verne himself, standing by the Seine river, leaning on one of its bridges, staring the sky, with his eyes fixed on the starts, and the ideas wandering wild in his head, allowing himself to dream, but challenging himself at the same time, to solve the amazing puzzle he had just created.
Lucy for us, the immense imagination of Jules Verne, give us not only a couple of magnificent stories about the space, but a nice set of adventures set on the most unimaginable places.
