I'd like to read this book divorced from its heritage of Victorian snobbery, without having to recoil at the awful, racist, wrong-headed sentiments expressed in the book. I'd like to admire Verne's creativity in devising a plot that relied on the then-obscure reference to time zones. I'd like to enjoy this adventure story for what it was.

Alas, even the company that recorded this audio CD apologetically acknowledges, the racism is unavoidable. Even for this white Anglophile, the idea promoted in this book that England is a bastion of civilization, good breeding, and the basis for which all morality derives made me want to gag. The portrayals of the people Phileas Fogg encounters around the world were appallingly racist, and I actually choked in indignation when the love interest of the story is described as beautiful because her skin is "as white as a European's."

But then, I suppose reading these things in context is an important part of understanding where we've come from. For a younger reader for whom this is a foreign concept, maybe this book is useful. But I'm pretty familiar by now with people's small-mindedness, thanks.

The story, itself, wasn't as fast-paced as I'd expected. For its time, maybe, it was going at a breakneck speed. But 80 days is a lot of time for introspection, and the book contains maybe 3 full days of scrambling to meet the deadline. Even the last leg of the journey manages to fall short. After the meandering pace of the rest of the book, the rushed sentences leading Phileas Fogg back to London came across to me as flat.

Speaking of flat, the characterizations were certainly lacking. There's very little actual insight into the characters or their development, so that book doesn't even have dynamic and interesting people to carry it.

I guess I'd consider the experience of listening to this book on CD to be educational, and not a complete waste of time, but next time, I think I'll just skip the racism and Eurocentrism.

Fun adventure, but the casual racism/sexism (which is expected based on when it was written) makes it less enjoyable. Adventure was so much slower paced back then...

A long adventure story.Main person name is fog.he is not a normal person because he challenge his friend he around the world in eighty day.He win this challenge...?or not..?if want know so read this story...

Still fresh and subtle digs at the English are still apt