1881-82 (collected 1883) / Audiobook / 282 pages / UK
***
Nicely paced until they get to the island and it shifts from wide-eyed adventure to depressing action and the tedious fallout. It wasn't as fun as I'd always assumed, the Muppet version's better.
John W. Campbell, Islands of Space
1931 (revised 1957) / Audiobook / 224 pages / USA***
I don't know if these vintage sci-fi writers were following received wisdom that you had to focus on either plot or character at the expense of the other, or if that's just how it tended to come out. In its lengthy descriptions of future tech and exploration of slightly-differentiated new worlds and inferior civilisations, this is squarely in the former camp, with occasional moments of wonder. Sometimes travel's about the places, not the people.
2006 / Audiobook / 352 pages / UK
****
Starting out as your basic but morbidly fun marauding monster investigation/debunking, this becomes more interesting when the mystery's seemingly solved before the halfway point and the horror gives way to sympathetic drama. For long enough that you let your guard down.
2009 / Ebook / 279 pages / USA
****
As exhaustive a guide as the show's most self-absorbed year requires, also going satisfyingly extracurricular to cover the promotional games, fan theories of the time and the significance of books and other works name-dropped. Bursting with enthusiasm, but not to the point of overlooking distracting continuity errors and bad wigs.
Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island2015 / Audiobook / 400 pages / USA
**
Twenty years on, the veteran travel writer tours Britain again, but mainly moans about the internet, the young people today and other random targets and gets into pointless arguments with proprietors and other locals. Maybe this is what reading my travel blog was like.
