Around the World in 80 Days

Commemorating Listening Library's 50th Anniversary, the publisher reprises the first book recorded as an audiobook in 1955. This new edition, read by Jim Dale, offers a good, if not brilliant, rendition of Verne's 1873 classic. Dale paces himself to Verne's narrative, which seems a bit slow and plodding. As the urgency of the circumnavigation increases, Dale's characters seem to gather more vitality. When Phileas Fogg, the focused English gentleman, and his resilient servant, Passepartout, encounter the boisterous Americans, Dale's interplay with the characters shines. Listeners will certainly enjoy some of Verne's satire, the geography, and the "modern" advances of travel in their nineteenth-century context. R.F.W. 2006 Audie Award Winner (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 14, 2005
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.