This evening’s walk was a hybrid: the kids wanted to go exploring; we wanted just a normal walk. So we began in the woods, then emerged in the adjacent neighborhood and headed back to the house the long way.

The Boy snapped pictures most of the way. And, somewhat predictably, the Girl, seeing E having all the fun, wanted to take a few pictures herself. Well, that sounds a little too cynical: she has expressed a slight interest in photography, but there is always that thirteen-year-old aspect to her that, well, I don’t know. She’s thirteen. That’s really all we need to say.

On the way back, so much silliness. I can’t remember the last time L, E, and K were so silly with each other, laughing at nonsense, making more nonsense just to make everyone laugh all the harder.

And Clover and I the only ones keeping things serious. Sort of.

We got back with time to spare before I had to start getting the Boy ready for bed. For our reading, we continued with what we’ve been slogging through for some time now: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It’s not that it’s a bad book: E insists that Verne is a master of cliffhangers. But he does seem to get a little carried away with himself. For example, one chapter begins thusly:

The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, “the great sea” of the Hebrews, “the sea” of the Greeks, the “mare nostrum” of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!

It’s not a passage for a seven-year-old. “What’s ‘par excellence mean?” “Who were the Hebrews?” “What are Greeks?” “‘Mare nostrum’ — what’s that?” “What does ’embalmed’ mean?”

The next chapter — the very next chapter — begins thusly:

The Atlantic! a vast sheet of water whose superficial area covers twenty-five millions of square miles, the length of which is nine thousand miles, with a mean breadth of two thousand seven hundred—an ocean whose parallel winding shores embrace an immense circumference, watered by the largest rivers of the world, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Plata, the Orinoco, the Niger, the Senegal, the Elbe, the Loire, and the Rhine, which carry water from the most civilised, as well as from the most savage, countries! Magnificent field of water, incessantly ploughed by vessels of every nation, sheltered by the flags of every nation, and which terminates in those two terrible points so dreaded by mariners, Cape Horn and the Cape of Tempests.

“Jules, you’re killing me!” I wanted to yell. But it did give us some laughs.

In truth, though, I’ve been skipping — sometimes rather liberally. Take this passage from tonight’s chapter, for example:

Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass. The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving. My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the darkness. They were the eyes of giant crustacea crouched in their holes; giant lobsters setting themselves up like halberdiers, and moving their claws with the clicking sound of pincers; titanic crabs, pointed like a gun on its carriage; and frightful-looking poulps, interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.

That got cut to this:

Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass.

I’ve determined that I’m not a fan of such novels, which seem to be nothing but a litany of adventures leading to — to what? Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil want to escape, but thus far, there’s been precious little talk of it and a lot of chatter about all the marvels Nemo is showing them.

Fortunately, the Boy agrees in part: we can do without all the descriptive flourishes — let’s get to the action. And through it so we can read something else. Perhaps Tom Sawyer?