The Mysterious Island

My all-time favorite book, which I haven't reread since high school. There's been an explosion in Verne studies and a raft of new translations. Most of the old translations were poor, cutting out large portions of the books. The standard Mysterious Island was 90,000 words; this new one is 190,000 words! Still holds up very well as the ultimate Desert Island book.

This was like a different author wrote it.
20K Leagues was so tedious and dull.
This was a pretty good and interesting lost on an island story.
Not very realistic but stuff was happening all the time and not just a list of the plant and animal life
on the island.

As always, Jules Verne shows his incredible talent. It's the longest book I remember reading from him, I was maybe about twelve or thirteen. I still recall when, mid-through reading, I thought I had already read half of the book but turned out I had most of the pages left! However, I never felt like putting it down, I kept on until I finished it and it felt like a huge accomplishment and it still is in memory.