by Jules Verne

Reading translations always makes me wish I was more fluent in languages other than English. Oh, my Spanish is passable for getting directions and shopping, and my French is great when it comes to dance steps and cooking terms, but I don’t read enough of either to enjoy a deep conversation or a deep novel. Thus it was that I read The Lighthouse at the End of the World in English, and I suspect it lost a bit in translation.

If you love sea stories or action stories, pirates and treachery and that sort of thing, this is the novel for you. It’s an understated piece, and the language is fairly plain. It’s about a group of three lighthouse keepers sent to a remote island lighthouse. Said island is also inhabited by pirates who kill two of the keepers. The last must hold the light until help, in the form of soldiers, arrives.

Typically for me, I felt drenched while reading it (a very wet June may have helped.)

A classic.