Around the World in 80 Days
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
Would you risk half of your fortune to prove a point? Phileas Fogg was a wealthy English gentleman who kept a quiet life and a tight schedule. After getting into a debate over an article in The Daily Telegraph with his comrades at the Reform Club, Fogg decides to cast aside his life of mathematical precision on a bet: £20,000 (worth about £1.6 million today) that he can travel around the world in 80 days. Fogg sets off with his valet, Jean Passepartout, on an adventure across the globe, traveling by train, steamship, wind-powered sledge, and even by elephant. The journey has its road-bumps: missed departures, hurricanes, kidnapping, and, of course, pursuit by Scotland Yard Detective Fix, who believes that Fogg is bank robber on the run. This classic tale by Jules Vernes is full of high adventure, romance, surprises, and suspense. With everything going wrong, will our friends make it back to London in time to win the bet? Or will Phileas Fogg lose his fortune but, perhaps, gain something much more valuable along the way?
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.
