throwbackthursday

Throwback Thursday meme is hosted by Renee@It’s Book Talk and is a way to share some of your old favourites as well as sharing books that you’re FINALLY getting around to reading that were published over a year ago. You know, the ones waiting patiently on your TBR list while you continue to pile more titles on top of them 🙂! These older books are usually much easier than new releases to get a hold of at libraries and elsewhere. If you have your own Throwback Thursday recommendation feel free to jump on board, you’re welcome to use Renee’s pic as well. If you’d just link back to her @ It’s Book Talk she’d so appreciate it.

My choice this week is: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

From Goodreads:

Paperback, Penguin Red Classic, 180 pages
Published December 1st 2006 by Penguin Books (first published 1897)
1775997With H.G. Wells’ other novels, The War of the Worlds was one of the first and greatest works of science fiction ever to be written. Even long before man had learned to fly, H.G. Wells wrote this story of the Martian attack on England. These unearthly creatures arrive in huge cylinders, from which they escape as soon as the metal is cool. The first falls near Woking and is regarded as a curiosity rather than a danger until the Martians climb out of it and kill many of the gaping crowd with a Heat-Ray. These unearthly creatures have heads four feet in diameter and colossal round bodies, and by manipulating two terrifying machines – the Handling Machine and the Fighting Machine – they are as versatile as humans and at the same time insuperable. They cause boundless destruction. The inhabitants of the Earth are powerless against them, and it looks as if the end of the World has come. But there is one factor which the Martians, in spite of their superior intelligence, have not reckoned on. It is this which brings about a miraculous conclusion to this famous work of the imagination.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book when I read it a few years ago, which really surprises me as I don’t read sci-fi. I’ve loved the music album by Jeff Wayne since I first heard back in the late 1970s, and there is so much more in the book than on the album. It really is a wonderful Victorian work of literature and makes me realise what a wonderful imagination H G Wells and his contemporaries must have had. Considering this book is over 100 years old it stands the test of time very well and compares well with modern novels.