Funny, surprising and well documented, Jules Verne's drive me crazy with the amount of number, calculs, diagramm and chart in this book. But one admire the dedication of a man depicting the impossible and burlesque situations with an seriousness that is respectable.
I love to hate the characters but I think the keys and real meaning of the Story escape me for I lack in knowledge of French-American relationships and history at the time. A classic and absolute re-read

This has been a great read, and I greatly enjoyed seeing all the progress we've made in astronomy in the last century.

Not his best, was a bit of a struggle to get through. Slow...

A fun and funny book about a bunch of Civil War era gunnery experts who are so bored with the post-war peace that they decide to build a cannon and shoot themselves to the moon. Verne gets a bit bogged down in the details--there are pages and pages of discussion on the size and makeup of the cannon, the size of the projectile, the type of gunpowder or other substance used, the location of the cannon, etc. You wouldn't think there would be time for such elaborate descriptions in such a short book (the version I read was only 74 pages long), but there you have it. Fortunately, Verne has a great sense of humor and even these seemingly mundane details are interspersed with plenty of amusing touches (as well scientific ideas that are hilarious to the modern reader, whether or not they were intended to be). I for one was pleasantly surprised to find so much humor in such an early work, as much modern science fiction is characterized by an almost unnaturally serious tone.

It's not as seamless as later entries in the science fiction genre, to be sure--the genre was still very nascent at this time, and a lot of the kinks had yet to be worked out. But if you read it with a little indulgence and patience, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I just love Jules Verne. :)
I love how he backs everything up with science. It's 1860's science, so some things have since been disproved. But when reading the story it really makes you feel like this could actually be done in reality.

A great science fiction novel, but the characters felt underdeveloped, if I didn’t have to finish it for a project I probably would have stopped in the middle because I didn’t care about the character conflicts

2.5*