I was hoping to finish this book in a few hours, but it took me more than 3 days to finish it. Though the Science bit was actually quite impressive, I did not enjoy it at all. But there was the inescapable Verne writing that I have now come to dread that literally haunted me through the entire book, the excruciatingly slow pace of the story progression and the crazy level of Science involved for such a short read. There are a lot of good things I can say about this book like the entire concept of the Gun Club and the mission to send a projectile to Moon, some really sharp sarcastic observations that made me giggle every time I recalled them later on, a decent story overall and the feel-good factor. Though there was a fair bit of skimming involved (like pages at times.) I’m not a fan of Jules Verne’s writing, hence it was a bit difficult for me to complete this book. Coincidence - or fact!? We say you’ll have to read this story yourself to judge. Even the return to earth happened in more-or-less the same place. Apollo 11 had a three-person crew, just as Verne’s did and both blasted off from the American state of Florida. Verne’s cannon was named the Columbiad the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia. Our rocket ship gets shot out of a cannon? To the moon? Goodness! But in other ways it’s full of eerie bits of business that turned out to be very near reality: he had the cost, when you adjust for inflation, almost exactly right. Verne’s 1865 tale of a trip to the moon is (as you’d expect from Verne) great fun, even if bits of it now seem, in retrospect, a little strange. Edition: Paperback (part of The Collector’s Book Of Science Fiction)

From the earth to the moon 1865