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Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
Please don't hesitate to continue your reading of this novel on my account.
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That seems fine. Instead of coordinating we can read at our own pace. Since you are behind, when you want to make a comment you can say where you are and I'll comment to that point.
So, spoilers up to chapter 5:
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Chapter Four contained a notorious info dump from the Observatory of Cambridge to the Gun Club explaining the time and way to fire a cannon toward the moon. Although I found it boring, I continued to read that chapter all the way through.  
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Infodump, yes, but it's a really short chapter! Basically the gun-club has written to the Cambridge observatory (Cambridge in Massachusetts, not in the UK), asking the astronomers what would be required for a projectile to reach the moon, and the astronomers take it very seriously and respond, putting themselves at their disposal for any help they can give the project. Chapter 4, then, is their response, suggesting the best moment for the experiment and the best locations for the cannon, and what the speed of the projectile would need to be.
Once Barbicane announces his project there is kind of a national enthusiasm, as would happen a century later, when the actual Apollo program inspired the whole country. In that Verne was visionary, imagining how a project of that nature would capture the imagination of the world. Of course, he was living in an age of discoveries and optimism about scientific progress.
His communication to the gun-club reminded me of the beginning of Five Weeks in a Balloon, where Dr. Fergusson makes a speech to the Royal Geographical Society in London, to announce his project to explore Africa in a balloon, and is also met with enthusiasm (and some incredulity). But here the Gun-Club will play a more central role in the story, apart from being a source of humor. So far this is the funniest Verne novel I have read. Journey to the Center of the Earth had funny moments too, but not as many.
The chapter you are reading, chapter 5, is also a popular science infodump, about the formation of the moon, the planets and the stars... It's also quite short, and I found it surprisingly accurate, taking into account this was written in the 1860s. You can skip it if you want, really, but I find it interesting. I found some of the discussions about ballistics that are still ahead for you a bit more boring.
So, there's quite a lot of infodump in this first part of the book, more than in other Verne novels, which I think is explained by the unprecedented nature of the project.
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What I liked so far is the outlandish physical condition of the members of the Gun Club and the fact there were no more wars so they might utilize their weapons and kill people:
(...)
And the physical aspects associated with the members of the Gun Club:
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Yes, the members of the gun-club, which is more like the artillery-designers club, are hilarious. They are so self-centered and single-minded about their hobby/profession that they are outraged that the nation is at peace. They take it as a personal insult. And of course the physical description of their amputations is a running gag:
"and it was calculated by the great statistician Pitcairn that throughout the Gun Club there was not quite one arm between four persons and two legs between six."
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Impey Baricane, however, who is the President of the Gun Control is "punctual as a chronometer...with all his limbs intact." He's a wonderfully described character.
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He's a very distinctive type of Verne character: the visionary who conceives of the exploration project and is the driving force behind it. Later, there will be Verne novels without that archetype, but in the books I have read so far we always have it: Dr. Fergusson in Five Weeks in a Balloon, Professor Lidenbrock in Journey to the Center of the Earth, or the titular character in The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. In a way they are admirable, but they are also almost scary, because their dedication to the project is so absolute that they take no notice of the risks to themselves and to others.