



Around the World in 80 Days
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4.1 • 10 Ratings
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
Around the World in 80 Days is a true classic written by Jules Verne. Verne's most outrageous "voyage extraordinaire" -a hasty world tour taken up on a gentlemen's club wager! Mr. Phileas Fogg, master of precision, enters into the strangest wager ever made over the whist table that he will circle the globe in 80 days. The news astounds Jean Passepartout, sometime wandering minstrel, bareback rider, funambulist, gymnast and fireman, now turned valet to Mr. Fogg in the expectancy of a quiet and well-regulated life. For the next 80 days, their lives are anything but quiet or well regulated. Jules Verne preferred to call himself an author of "voyages extraordinaires." An extraordinary voyage it is, from Fogg's announcement to Passepartout that they are to "leave for Dover in ten minutes," to his triumphant return to the Reform Club at the last second!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sounds of a chugging steam engine and the orchestral movie-score strains that open this program set the stage for Dale's top-drawer performance of this much-loved adventure story. As one could set a clock by eccentric Phileas Fogg's daily routine, Fogg shocks everyone when he bets his personal fortune that he can complete the trip proposed in the book's title and then sets off on the wild trip. Listeners can almost envision a twinkle in Dale's eye as he delivers the lines of Fogg's traveling companion and man-servant Passepartout in an entertaining, though not over-the-top, French accent. Dale's vibrant, never-hurried reading is pleasantly punctuated by background music of the era at chapter breaks. A bonus afterword notes that this new edition pays homage to Listening Library's very first recording in 1955, of this same book. The added material also mentions the historical and social context of Verne's writings about other cultures, the tone of which would be considered insensitive or offensive by many people today. Ages 8-up.