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Reading books written and translated in that time period is an acquired taste. Fortunately, I started reading them back when I was in grade school and didn't know that they were too popular to be worthy of reading.
It is interesting how different the various translations are. Some of the translations are more palatable to modern readers. Other translations include many of the prejudices that were common in England during the time period. Some translations are edited to make them flow more smoothly.
I decided to start with Five Weeks in a Balloon simply because it was the first book Verne wrote and I have movie version of it with Red Buttons. Let's just say that Hollywood took certain liberties with the book.
For the most part, many of the popular books of the time were oriented towards being published in serial form in magazines and like TV series, both have a level of repetition to remind readers what happened in last month's installment, and are perhaps best read in chapter sized chucks rather than all at one time.
One thing that I didn't know is that at the time, it was common for one person to buy a copy of the magazine/paper and then read it out loud to a group of people. It very well could be that audiobook is the most true version of the works. I was actually aware that it was pretty common for this to happen with regards to people out west getting copies of the eastern papers and reading them out loud, I just wasn't aware that it happened in Europe as well.
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