The Lost World

Fun. Descriptions, characterizations are delightfully rendered. Fast paced and intriguing ideas. Lose the high blood pressure medication. A classic worth some time.

An adventure so extraordinary that it will be mistaken in one month for a dream and, in some years, for a myth. In South America, our old maps had the figure of a dinosaur to mark terras incognitas, unexplored lands (not anymore as by now all has been already explored). I think it's because The lost World entered our consciousness; dreams and memories liquefy, until feeling them as a shadow of truth, fiction whose stuff could had been originated from rumors and ancient stories. You need to be a kid to fully enjoy this book. As an adult you will find the characters are (cherishable) caricatures, in a small isolated region I suspect the creatures, contrary to what happens in the book, would evolve to be small in size; the scientists drive a species into the brink of utter extinction :S, they seem to not care that much about the dinosaurs as we don't get to see much and is like Conan Doyle got bored with them so he introduced new characters that actually make the plot mundane. In the positive side natives are treated as adults, with differences, some good and some evil. As a native myself is sad each time all are presented as noble and wise people, an inhumane unidimensionality in my opinion, also the narrated landscape is majestic. And lastly in the side of curiosities professor Challenger is accused to forge photographs to sell an impossible discovery (it's at the beginning so it's not a spoiler), I read that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies because a photo of two girls with dancing fairies in a meadow; afterwards it was known that the photo was staged with pieces of paper, a forged photo... I don't see myself re-reading "The Lost World“ but I am truly happy to have read it, and I am sure you will be happy too : ) About the AmazonClassics Edition it has no illustrations, which I understand were present in its first publication, if it matters it depends of personal tastes, usually drawings don't express what one can imagine so I am fine with their absence. Beyond that this is an excellent edition with X-Ray and a modern and clean formatting, pure text without nosy introductions to spoil the adventure. Highly recommended edition.

The Lost World was both my first foray into reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and my first experience reading a full-length e-book. First of all, my impressions of the electronic format for reading have been significantly improved by this experience. Although I still would prefer to read with a book in hand, I can appreciate the portability and convenience of this medium. I do not own an actual e-reader, so when I one day do own one, I may have to increase my current liking of the electronic format, but suffice it to say for the time being that I did not hate this format and using the Kindle for PC format provided by Amazon.com I enjoyed the fact that I could access my "book" at the place that I had left off from any of my computers whether at home, work or traveling. My opinions of the novel itself could not be more glowing. For such a short novel, I am amazed that I found such richness in the characters, storyline, prose, action and content as I was exposed to in The Lost World. Doyle has done an amazing job of creating unique, interesting and fully fleshed out characters. The story contains plenty of excitement and adventure and most of his scientific reasoning is plausible especially considering the time in which the novel was written. I had always had it in mind that I needed to read the Sherlock Holmes stories of Doyle but just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Now I know that I must read more of his works, not only the Holmes stories but now the Challenger series as well. Professor Challenger is one of the most outlandish, boisterous and absolutely wonderful characters in literature and I am a bit surprised that I really hadn't heard too much about the character before reading this besides in another GoodReads members' review that prompted me to read this in the first place. Overall, a fun well-written novel that transcends it's age and really doesn't feel terrible dated that I thoroughly enjoyed! (And yes, I will be reading more books in e-book format as well.)

Of course this original story bears little resemblance to what much later became "Jurassic Park" but you can see where the inspiration came. A lost world where dinosaurs and ancient tribes lived at the same time. Of all the meat eating "Iguanadons", it was the stealthy, killer tribe of the Ape men that was most scary here. A tale well told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and well-worth checking out of you haven't before this.

Der berühmte Zoologe Prof. Challenger wird von der Fachgemeinde nicht mehr Ernst genommen. Er behauptet prähistorische lebende Tiere auf einer Südamerika-Expedition entdeckt zu haben. Dort hat er ein Skizzenbuch von einem Mann gefunden, welcher einen Stegosaurus in seinem Tagebuch gezeichnet hat. Er ist seiner Spur auf die Plateaus gefolgt und konnte dort auch eine Fotografie von einem Pterodactylus machen. Doch keiner seiner Kollegen schenkt ihm Glauben. Prof. Challenger: „When great facts are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which would help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the men who have risked their lives to open new fields of science.” Um das alles also vor seinen Kollegen zu beweisen, plant er eine Expedition bei dem ihm sein erbitterter Gegner Prof. Summerlee, der expeditionserfahrene Jäger Lord John Roxton und der Journalist Mr. Malone begleiten werden. Als sie auf schwierigen Wegen endlich das Plateau erreichen, sind sie auf das, was sie antreffen, überhaupt nicht vorbereitet. Es scheint zudem auch keinen Weg mehr zurück zu geben. Lord John Roxton: „…they are – Missin’ Links, and I wish they had stayed missin’.” Arthur Conan Doyle hat einen großartigen Roman geschaffen, der voller Spannung und Humor steckt. Aber auch die Wissenschaft kommt hier nicht zu kurz. Dieser Roman ist für die damalige Zeit (1912) auf dem aktuellsten Stand der Wissenschaft, aber natürlich ist es legitim, wenn der Autor auch etwas seine Fantasie spielen lässt. “The Lost World” ist ein wirklich spannender Abenteuer-Klassiker, den man unbedingt einmal gelesen haben sollte.

I have been going to read this book for so many years. Now I have retired I have more free time to read.

Very good book every child should read it

I have never been a Sherlock Holmes fan but I was told this was a good book. I enjoyed it but I do find that Arthur Conan Doyle very long winded.

This is a classic.