For everyone who read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days, I'm sure that Paris in the Twentieth Century is a terrible letdown. It is Jules Verne's eponymous "Lost Novel" as it was -- oddly enough -- lost until it was rediscovered by his great-grandson in 1989 and polished up for printing.
Verne lived in the 19th century and he wrote Paris in the Twentieth Century in 1863, but his publisher rejected it because many of the descriptions of the modern world were too unbelievable, or so he thought. Verne may be vying with Nostradamus, or in fact exceeding him, because many of Verne's predictions are true (ish).
While they aren't exact, Verne predicted and described in some detail:
Internal Combustion Engine Cars (run on Hydrogen)
Mass-Transit High Speed Trains (run, implausibly, by compressed air and magnetism)
Computers with Keyboards (described like piano keys)
The internet (well, telegraph systems capable of instant communication of text and scanning and reproduction of documents/pictures)
Verne's main character, Michel Dufrenoy, excels in Latin poetry and has a strong desire to read classical literature -- two skills still prized during Verne's lifetime. The world he lives in, however, views him as an unmanageable failure with no useful skills whatsoever. Literature is all scientific, mechanical, technical and profitable. Money, business, and efficiency are the order of the day and nothing else matters. Michel embarks on an intellectual journey after meeting his estranged uncle in the public library and he makes friends with two other marginalized individuals: Quinsonnas, a scribe for the ledger of a bank but secretly a musician; and a clerk for a shipping company who dreams of being in the army (they got rid of war too).
In a world unappreciative of the literature and more than disdainful of the arts, young Michel struggles to find his place. While the descriptions of Paris, and the world of 1960, are brilliant, much of the dialogue is not. It feels forced and Michel practically shouts everything he says, or is confused and accusatory. This may be a product of the translation from French, but probably not.
Read it for what it is, and appreciate all those little predictions that parallel our world today. Also let's not become as mechanical as Verne's Paris, we need poets too!
Why it's uncommon: Well it was lost, and now it's found. Also the descriptions of a modern Paris, and the modern world itself, are for the most part spot on.
Why it should be commonly read: Sure, Verne paints a bleak future, but lets face it: we're not really doing much better (search google news for "education funding cuts"). Also famous authors last, or lost, books hold a romantic quality.