In Search of the Castaways
Jules Verne
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.
Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (summary from Wikipedia) (17 hr 1 min)
Chapters
Reviews
Slightly fanciful, varied narration
Mali Taus
The story is not too bad although there are parts, like opening a volcano and camping next to it for a day that are a little too "imaginative". The narration is pretty good from just about all the volunteers except for the terrible murder of a number of Australian and New Zealand words like Maori. That's mao-ri as in chairman Mao, not ma-or-i as in "oar". Or perhaps we could start saying Amer - eee - can In - die - ians as in "we" and "dye". While I can accept that the odd place name is mispronounced, the name of a race that appears hundreds of times probably deserves a little research: http://www.forvo.com/word/maori/ But otherwise, thank you for volunteering your time
Good book, some frustrating chapters
Idahoan
The book is great. I highly recommend reading it before The Mysterious Island. Unfortunately a narrator who does not speak very good English reads quite a few chapters in the middle and the final chapter of the book. She is quite hard to understand - even for a listener who speaks to foreign languages besides my native English. It was very frustrating, but I had already invested so much time into listening that I did not want to quit. Do yourself a favor and just read the book unless Libra Vox comes out with a different version.
Amazing adventure
As fun as it is amazing and far fetched. I encourage anyone to enjoy this far flung adventure.
Good Story
Logan Nicholson
I was surprised by this one, I love Characters that are truly good even when faced with terrible situations they stayed faithful and stood by their purpose. It was also a lot of fun! Pagonel was such a great character and even though many of the events are fantastic, it is no worse than a super hero movie. I know many people have complained about the narrators not being clear. There were some chapters that had a lot of mispronounced words and a very thick accent. but I felt that with such an internationall story, the accents added to the feel of the book. I shared the characters experience in deciphering a strange foreign message.
find a different narration! some terrible narrators
AisForRebel
I wish you could flag certain chapters to be redone. there is a woman in the middle of book 2 that apparently is still learning English. And later on in book 3 there is a guy who is probably even worse, ch.9 when he started. I would recommend finding a different version so you can enjoy this book.
hawk seeker
I’m a truck driver and I listen to many many books. I want to tell you that I appreciate this app and I understand that it is free but some of the readers were almost unintelligible. It was very easy to tell that English is not their first language and it made it very difficult to understand the chapters they were reading.
Wonderful Adventure
LexiBlossom
This is probably one of my favorite Verne novels yet! There were so many epic happenings and lovable characters. I enjoyed it immensely. *Please note that this book has some racism which is common in older books. If this greatly disturbs/triggers you, you might want to hold off on this read.
A LibriVox Listener
While I appreciate the passion for the book by the readers. Please have readers whom English is their first language. There were several volunteers who you could not understand and made it extremely hard to follow.