Summer read alouds

We've enjoyed a couple good read alouds recently.

The first was Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.

I have this edition, which includes an afterword by Isaac Asimov.



I have to admit Mysterious Island is a bit of a slog at times to read. For one thing it's bleeding long. But more importantly, the sentence structure in this translation is sometimes awkward. Sentences ended where I didn't naturally expect them to, or the syntax was so twisted that I lost the meaning while reading. There are some awkward non pc attitudes to the black member of the group (a freed slave who chooses to stay with his 'master') but it's nothing egregious.

And the story itself makes up for all that. If Hugo had had his way I would have read this non stop. It appealed tremendously to his imagination.

The book as a whole is a tribute to science, technology and a wonderful optimism of what man can accomplish. [Roo (a geologist) was rolling his eyes about the highly unlikely presence of certain minerals together in that type of landmass and Roo & I both were in disbelief at the pace of the work accomplished by the men on this island. They mined ore and established foundries in a few short weeks. They even made glass! I'm guessing it's because they didn't have the internet to distract them.]

A couple experiments resulted from this book: Hugo learned to make his own charcloth, and later he acquired a magnesium fire starter, and learned how to use these tools to make fires.

He wanted to learn to make explosives - the islanders manufactured & used explosives in a couple cases - but understandably I've been stalling him on that.



The other great read aloud was a translation of a Polish classic which I also own in the original Polish. It's called In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz (whom some of you might know from classical book lists as his Quo Vadis? often pops up there)



This is a story set in Egypt & Sudan around the time of the building of the Suez Canal. Two children of European canal engineers are kidnapped and trek through deserts and wilderness, overcoming challenges, escaping, trying to find their way back. It's an adventure story, a coming of age story, but there are also some other interesting themes: nationalism, independence, and faith. The kidnappers are Muslim and trying to use the kids as trade for some Muslim prisoners. This is the time of Charles Gordon, rebellion in the Sudan & the Mahdi uprising. There are camels, lions, malaria, and savage tribes. Again probably not very pc at times, but at the same time, Sienkiewicz had a great affection for this land and he conveys it.

We used the Lipinski translation which is the 'new' translation. I have to say that I thought there were a number of places where the language is a bit tortured. It's not just due to the 100 years old style - it definitely was a translation issue. I hear the same tortured syntax from some Poles. I'm going to try and get a hold of the older version transl. by Drezmal. One other thing - my old Polish copy has black ink drawings and some of the old Drezmal versions also have illustrations. The Lipinski has no illustrations.

There is also a newish movie version of it.



It's lushly filmed & quite beautiful. It is reasonably true to the story if I recall correctly - it's been a few years since I've seen it. I'm going to dig it out for us to watch soon. Purists do complain about the deletion of a key scene which did appear in the 1970's version; it is a pretty iconic scene so I would have liked to see it included there too. The DVD has options to view it dubbed or subtitled. The English dubbing was terrible & I think wrecked the film. If you go for it, watch it with subtitles.