Play Book Tag discussion

(Note - I read this book for the Steampunk tag, but forgot to review it. It’s too late for BWF, but here’s a very brief review.)

Around the World in Eighty Days is an entertaining adventure story about Phineas Fogg, a Victorian English man who makes a bet in this club that he can traverse the globe in only Eighty days. Having recently fired his valet for making his tea 2 degrees too cool, he brings his new valet, a Frenchman who was hoping for a more sedate life. We see much of the story through the eyes of Passportout, his new valet. Fogg proves to be a more forgiving employer to Passportout, and they both experience trials and danger along the way. I was waiting for an airship or balloon, but apparently that was only in the movie I saw when I was a kid. My favorite parts were in India when they rode an elephant and saved an Indian widow from being sacrificed on a funeral pyre. She was a nice addition to the travel party. They were dogged most of the way by a detective who thought Fogg was a bank robber, based on information he gleaned from Passportout. The trip across the US included a demand for a duel, and an attack by the Sioux. (Not my favorite parts). I liked the ending quite a bit.

I was hoping to pair this classic (purely fictional) novel with the real life story of a similar trip by the reporter Nellie Bly. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World. (I’ve been a fan girl since I was very young.) Maybe I’ll get around to it next year.

Interesting bit about the hot air balloon :-). I got curious and googled. This is what I found:

"Phileas Fogg does not travel in a hot air balloon in Around the World In Eighty Days. Yes, there is a mention of such travel in Chapter 32, but the idea is dropped. The iconic symbol of the hot air balloon became associated with Jules Verne’s book in the 1956 film starring David Niven."

Doughgirl5562 wrote: "Interesting bit about the hot air balloon :-). I got curious and googled. This is what I found:

"Phileas Fogg does not travel in a hot air balloon in Around the World In Eighty Days. Yes, there is..."

Yeah, the book didn’t have a lot of steampunk devices or fashions as far as I noticed, but the movie might have had a little of the steampunk flair.

We all know by now that books are tagged something that they really don't fit. This is one of them. Sometimes it's probably because someone doesn't want a lot of shelves so lumps books together that maybe don't really fit the tag - I know I do that because I just want a few tags. For example, I don't have many subgenres separately identified, but I have a shelf named heist or adventure so you can find some odd books side by side there.

Well, it's from the Victorian era, and others of Verne's books are tagged steampunk, so that's maybe why people gave it that tag. In my opinion, steampunk should only apply to modern fake Victoriana, with steam doing things it never did in history (like powering an airship), mechanical computers, etc. Just like historical fiction doesn't apply to a book just because it's old. Oliver Twist isn't historical fiction, but A Tale of Two Cities is, because it is about an earlier era.

Of course, GR readers often have things tagged in the wrong era, or even fiction and nonfiction wrong!