Having enjoyed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I reviewed a few months ago, I decided to check out two more novels by Jules Verne: Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days. It was my intention to review one or the other for this blog.

In one of these novels, explorers venture inside the Earth; in the other, travelers go round it. Since they have so much in common, I’ve decided to review them both. Today, ladies and gentlemen, TMTF makes history with its first ever double book review!

Journey to the Center of the Earth—or A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, as my translation was titled—is the tale of Otto Lidenbrock, a professor who discovers a mysterious cipher in an old manuscript. This secret message sends Lidenbrock, his hapless nephew Axel and their stoic guide Hans into the crater of an Icelandic volcano, from which they travel into the heart of the Earth.

Around the World in Eighty Days tells the story of Phileas Fogg, a British gentleman whose predictable life is interrupted by the sudden decision to travel round the world on a bet. His servant Passepartout accompanies him, perplexed by Fogg’s wager and determined to help him win it.

In the three books I’ve read by Jules Verne—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days—he seems to create characters by mixing and matching personality traits. Conseil, Hans and Passepartout serve their masters with single-minded devotion. Ned Land, Lidenbrock and Passepartout are impulsive and short-tempered. Conseil, Hans and Fogg are impassive, calm and logical.

These characters were engaging enough at first, but they eventually began to feel a bit stale. The farther I progressed into each story, the stronger the sense of déjà vu.

I was disappointed by Journey to the Center of the Earth. Like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it has only a few significant characters. However, unlike that novel, its characters aren’t really memorable.

In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo gives fascinating hints of his motives and identity. Ned Land begins to crack under the pressure of his underwater captivity. These characters are compelling. In Journey to the Center of the Earth, Lidenbrock is mildly interesting and the others are forgettable.

Journey to the Center of the Earth isn’t bad, but it’s hardly more than a sightseeing tour. There is hardly any character development. The plot is simplistic. The novel has no depth. (Pardon the pun.) It’s merely the record of a journey, and—compared to the adventures in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea—not a particularly impressive one.

I liked Around the World in Eighty Days much better.

The novel gives colorful glimpses of exotic locations around the world. From India to Japan to the American West, I had strong impressions of the places Fogg and Passepartout visit in their travels. The variety is delightful, and every locale seems authentic. If Verne is guilty of inaccuracies, I didn’t notice.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is not an especially exciting book. Its protagonists face dangers, but there is never the slightest doubt they will survive. In Around the World in Eighty Days, however, the protagonists race against the clock and the calendar. They must not merely survive their journey—they must complete it within a time limit. As I followed their travels, I rejoiced with every shortcut and cringed with every setback. The reader is kept in suspense until nearly the very end.

If you read only one of these two novels, I recommend Around the World in Eighty Days. I found it much more gripping. However, Journey to the Center of the Earth isn’t bad, particularly as a complement to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. These tales of exploration, subterranean and submarine, are worth reading. It’s just a pity the characters in the former aren’t as interesting as those in the latter.

I like dystopian fiction. From young-adult novels like The Giver and House of Stairs to literary classics like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451, there’s something morbidly fascinating about governments and societies gone wrong.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is considered one of the greatest dystopian novels ever written. Is this grim tale of bad society a good book?

The purpose of most dystopian fiction isn’t merely to tell a story, but to convey an idea. Dystopian stories aren’t just stories, but fables. Brave New World is no exception. It does a fantastic job of depicting a dysfunctional society, and a less fantastic—but still competent—job of creating an engaging plot and well-developed characters.

Nineteen Eighty-Four shows a society controlled by fear. Fahrenheit 451 depicts a society controlled by censorship. Brave New World is different. Its society is controlled by pleasure. People aren’t forced to obey. They’re conditioned to obey. The government doesn’t need to burn books or monitor its citizens. It promotes promiscuous sexuality, hands out recreational drugs and makes sure everyone has such a good time that no one ever bothers to ask questions.

Brave New World introduces its horrifying society in a brilliantly calm, matter-of-fact way. (The novel is full of exposition, which is conveyed pretty smoothly through dialogue.) Children are conceived artificially in factories and preconditioned to their future careers. Infants are taught through painful operant conditioning (involving shrill sirens and electric shocks) to despise books and flowers. The early chapters of the novel describe the brave new world of Aldous Huxley in an incongruously cheerful—and chillingly effective—manner.

Having established its dystopian background, the novel introduces an outsider: the ironically-named Savage, who ultimately takes a stand against the unrestrained hedonism and vapid amorality of his world. Does he succeed? I won’t spoil the ending, but you can probably guess what happens.

As an illustration of a dystopian society, Brave New World devotes many pages to exposition. It’s a novel about ideas. Elements like plot and characterization are secondary. Not much happens in the novel—its plot could be summed up in a paragraph—and most of its characters aren’t terribly well-developed.

In the end, these shortcomings aren’t all that important. As a work of literature, Brave New World may have some faults, but it fulfills its purpose: depicting a dysfunctional society and evoking a reaction (whether disgust, dislike or horrified fascination) from the reader.

It’s not a cheerful read, but I recommend Brave New World—particularly as a complement to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. These novels give radically different takes on how society can go wrong: government by fear and government by pleasure.

Although he’s most famous for writing books about chocolate factories, giant peaches and Oompa-Loompas, Roald Dahl also published a couple of memoirs.

While visiting my family in Uruguay a few months ago, I read Going Solo, Dahl’s account of his experiences as a fighter pilot in World War II. I enjoyed the book, and thus it was with excitement that I snatched up its prequel, Boy: Tales of Childhood, at a local yard sale.

Are these tales of childhood worth hearing, or is Dahl a dull read?

Roald Dahl puts off Boy to a hopeful start: “An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography.” The book is, in fact, a collection of anecdotes from Dahl’s childhood. Important details are included to establish context. The reader is taken from before Dahl’s birth all the way to his graduation from school.

Some of the anecdotes are interesting, but I was mostly disappointed. While Going Solo gives readers Dahl’s vivid recollections of African jungles and vicious battles, Boy consists mostly of plain stories that might have happened to anyone. It’s not a bad memoir, but it’s not a particularly gripping one either.

Nevertheless, the book was not without its surprises. As he tells stories about his childhood, Dahl occasionally pauses to address deeper issues. After writing about his headmaster’s skill for corporal punishment or his own experiences as a businessman, he sidetracks suddenly into simple, powerful accounts of his disillusionment with religion or the difficulties of writing creatively. These unexpected reflections give weight and depth to an otherwise unexceptional book.

I would probably have found the book more interesting had Dahl made more effort to explain how his experiences shaped his writing. He makes only a few connections between his life and his books, and so I was left with hardly anything to tie the eponymous Boy of Dahl’s memoir to the author whose books I enjoyed as a child.

I recommend Boy: Tales of Childhood to anyone who enjoys memoirs or the books of Roald Dahl, but not to the average reader. Going Solo is a more engaging read. Africa and World War II are much more interesting than boarding schools and candy shops. Better yet, read one of Dahl’s books for children. He’s remembered for those books, after all—not for his memoirs!