For my Friday meme combo this week I have chosen one of Jules Verne’s last novels, Master of the World. GoodReads offers the following brief description:
“It was seen first in North Carolina, or something was, smoking up from a mountain crater. With blinding speed, it roared past cars on a Pennsylvania road. It skimmed the Atlantic, then at the flick of its captain’s will dove beneath the waves…It was the “Terror”…ship, sub, plane, and land vehicle in one and a letter from its inventor claimed that with it, he would rule the world.” Long recognized as a truly prophetic science fiction classic, this exciting adventure was also Verne’s last novel.
Now for this week’s excerpts:
Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader, who invites anyone to join in, saying: ‘Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author. Leave a link to your post. If you don’t have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.’
The beginning of Master of the World:
If I speak of myself in this story, it is because I have been deeply involved in its startling events, even doubtless among the most extraordinary which this century will witness.
With lofty claims such as this, I really need to read this one soon to find out what is being talked about here!
The Friday 56 is a book meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are as follows:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.
It’s that simple.
From page 56 of Master of the World:
Decidedly, thought I, the devil has many uses; and if he did not exist we would have to invent him, to give people some way of explaining the inexplicable.
My interest is definitely piqued now, so I’m going to have to read it sooner rather than later. It’s not a huge book anyway, so it shouldn’t take me too long to get through it.
Two weeks from everywhere 