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Book 4 is the best one.
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Dec 2, 2016 23:50
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Book four is what I left off on. For some reason I was struggling to keep interested. It wasn't bad, Aubrey dealing with the responsibility of a Commodore was neat. prob just burnout. For some reason it's taking me a long time to read these books. When work gets heavy I stop all together, I'll read a chapter over the next couple days, then put it down for a week, then suddenly (like last night) read a quarter of the book in a sitting. I'm glad to see that for book 4 Bligh is a character- I'm watching Westworld and enjoying Anthony Hopkins, cannot wait for him to be my visual for the book!
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Dec 3, 2016 00:06
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Are there any good movies similar to M&C? I took Russell Crowe's advice today and sent an email asking if a sequel would be made, I really like that movie!
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Dec 3, 2016 00:13
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These are my favorite books ever but they do have some slow parts. There are some sections where POB wants to go into particulars of Royal Navy custom or English country life in a bit too much detail. Also if you read them straight through, remember that they came out years apart so I imagine he had to fluff things a bit to keep people up to date with the setting. That said, they do work incredibly well read back-to-back, in a few cases picking up right where the last one left off.
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Dec 3, 2016 00:36
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Arglebargle III posted:Book 4 is the best one. Desolation Island/Fortune of war duo are my favorites but Mauritius is good.
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Dec 3, 2016 00:41
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Fortune of War is good and so is Desolation Island.
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Dec 3, 2016 02:58
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hannibal posted:These are my favorite books ever but they do have some slow parts. There are some sections where POB wants to go into particulars of Royal Navy custom or English country life in a bit too much detail. Also if you read them straight through, remember that they came out years apart so I imagine he had to fluff things a bit to keep people up to date with the setting. That said, they do work incredibly well read back-to-back, in a few cases picking up right where the last one left off. That detail is sorely needed, in my opinion. A great deal was so different back then that it helps reinforce the not quite the sameness for me. That and I like to believe it is a deliberate nod to the idea that 95% of seagoing life was dull, or at least not filled with cannonballs but personal interactions between people.
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Dec 4, 2016 02:11
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I loving love these books. I kind of feel like as much as Jack uses the navy as an escape from the real ,"on shore" world, I use these books likewise sometimes.
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Dec 4, 2016 03:38
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Same, only with booze
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Dec 4, 2016 21:16
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Just started on this. It's SO much better than Hornblower, that there's no comparison. Having two moderately likable protagonists and a lively collection of tertiary caricatures is a far superior experience to be being shut in the head of a borderline autistic recluse. The way people are aware of each other's flaws is a lot more lifelike an interesting than leftenant Bush's adoration of his queer captain.
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Dec 5, 2016 12:13
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Xander77 posted:leftenant Bush's Just for clarity. Lieutenant is pronounced Left-tenant. I think it is in American English that it is pronounced Loo-tenant. I have been told that David Drake and David Weber are good authors to read after O'Brien. Has anyone read either of their books?
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Dec 15, 2016 22:20
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it's not traditionally pronounced as leftenant in the royal navy, that's an army thing
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Dec 15, 2016 23:31
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InediblePenguin posted:it's not traditionally pronounced as leftenant in the royal navy, that's an army thing wait really? You just blew my mind.
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Dec 16, 2016 00:38
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jerman999 posted:wait really? You just blew my mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant#Pronunciation it's l'tenant with the entire "oo or ef?" debate elided into a schwa
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Dec 16, 2016 02:57
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One thing all navies can agree on is that ensigns belong at the masthead.
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Dec 16, 2016 04:33
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Jack's new mother in law the dairy maid with her pledge to never rise before noon again after marrying the general. She's my spirit animal.
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Dec 18, 2016 18:53
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I started doing that a couple of years ago. I highly recommend it.
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Dec 19, 2016 04:52
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PlantHead posted:David Weber
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Dec 19, 2016 13:19
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PlantHead posted:Just for clarity. I tried to read Drake's "Aubrey/Maturin in space" novels, but they just didn't work for me. Which was a shame, because I loved his "exorcising the demons of his Vietnam experience in space" stories, aka the Hammer's Slammers series.
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Dec 19, 2016 15:50
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ZekeNY posted:I tried to read Drake's "Aubrey/Maturin in space" novels, but they just didn't work for me. Which was a shame, because I loved his "exorcising the demons of his Vietnam experience in space" stories, aka the Hammer's Slammers series. you quoted the context and everything so I really have no excuse, but I still thought 
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Dec 20, 2016 07:57
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Dec 20, 2016 10:26
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They should have added Stephen's pet beehive as Dogmatix imo.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:28
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InediblePenguin posted:you quoted the context and everything so I really have no excuse, but I still thought After seeing a rapping Alexander Hamilton become the big cultural touchstone, this wouldn't surprise me a bit!
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Dec 21, 2016 13:13
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This is superb
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Dec 26, 2016 18:38
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I finished Desolation Island last night, I really enjoyed it. Do Grant and the deserters come up again?
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Jan 2, 2017 21:13
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Almost immediately.
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Jan 2, 2017 21:29
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Not sure if it was brought up in the thread but during another re-read of Master and Commander I was greatly amused by the bit where Jack talks about having to hang a crew member guilty of sodomy with the ship's goat and Stephen has a suggestion:quote:"Could you not set them both ashore -- on separate shores, if you have strong feelings on the moral issue -- and sail quietly away?"
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Jan 2, 2017 22:30
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I've been listening to a bunch of O'Brien's non-Aubrey-Maturin novels on audiobook, so I figured I'd post some thoughts. I've arranged these by date of publication, rather than my preference or anything like that. The Catalans: A french catalan scientist comes home after a long absence to help deal with some family drama, set post-WW2. Very much concerned with everyone's inner emotional states, everything takes its time happening, might be classified as a literary novel on that basis I guess. Some of the main character's musings on people, their chracters and motivations, kind of resemble Maturin's, but at much greater length. Honestly found it a bit boring because I couldn't bring myself to care that much about the characters and their problems. Interesting that there's no real reason for the characters to be either french or catalan, other than that I guess O'Brien had become interested in the culture and wanted to include it. The Road to Samarcand: A fun little adventure novel about an orphaned teenager who ends up on an expedition across China with some of his relatives and a motley crew, set between the world wars. It's written kind of like a romp, but from what I can tell he really paid attention to the details of the setting, it feels quite authentic, and captures both the interesting culture and chaotic situation of China at that time. The Golden Ocean: An O'Brien naval adventure about an Irish kid who signs on as a midshipman for Anson's expedition in 1740. A good read, and a very different perspective than the Aubrey books because the protagonist isn't in command, and so doesn't have any real say in the fate of his ship. O'Brien's first naval novel, but the nautical jargon already flows freely. Interesting historical point: The ships themselves, and the manner of sailing them, don't seem to be too different between 1740 and 1800 or so (when the Aubrey books are set), but they hadn't figured out that citrus juice could prevent scurvy, so in any circumnavigation either you got really lucky with your opportunities for resupply, or your men just started dropping like flies after a while. Strange to think of lime juice as a technology, but it made a huge difference. Also the English weren't yet in the habit of rounding the horn, so much is made of it, as opposed to the Aubrey novels where it seems to have become pretty routine. The Unknown Shore: I haven't gotten too far through this, so I can't say much, other than that previous comments about Jack and Toby being prototypes of Jack and Stephen seem pretty spot on. Kinda funny to read another book set in the same expedition that includes some of the same characters in the beginning, though their fates diverge. Richard Temple: This book is honestly kind of strange. It opens with the protagonist being tortured in a jail in Nazi-occupied France on suspicion of being a spy, but then shifts to him reminiscing at great length, and in great detail, about his childhood, schooling, and pre-war career as a starving painter in London. These reminiscences bring him right up to the start of the war and his enlistment, but then there are only a few pages about his actual spywork and capture before it switches back to his present state, then he's liberated and the book ends. It seems like the bits in the prison were almost added as bookends to try and spice up a story which really wasn't particularly interesting.
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Jan 12, 2017 20:16
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I just finished the first chapter of Fortune and I don't know anything about Cricket... did Maturin play the game right and astound everyone?
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Jan 19, 2017 00:42
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Professor Shark posted:I just finished the first chapter of Fortune and I don't know anything about Cricket... did Maturin play the game right and astound everyone? not quite
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Jan 19, 2017 00:44
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Professor Shark posted:I just finished the first chapter of Fortune and I don't know anything about Cricket... did Maturin play the game right and astound everyone? Yes to the second part
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Jan 19, 2017 00:57
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Professor Shark posted:I just finished the first chapter of Fortune and I don't know anything about Cricket... did Maturin play the game right and astound everyone? Nah, he thought they were Hurling and played the ball accordingly. I just started going through my Tull-read audiobooks again, and I'm about a third of the way through Post Captain. Holy poo poo, I forgot just how gross Mrs. Williams is. Also, there's so much going on in this book. It's probably my fifth time through it and I hear something new every time.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:59
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Hurling = ball in net to score. Cricket = ball hits the wicket/sticks and you're out. I think you're also not allowed to pick up the ball or to run with it.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:22
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:Nah, he thought they were Hurling and played the ball accordingly.
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Jan 19, 2017 13:10
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They were down and Stephen was their last hope, based on what he did they lost the 100 pounds
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Jan 19, 2017 13:26
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Yeah the I think the closest American analogue to that scene would be a new batter in a baseball game suddenly using his bat like a lacrosse stick, catching/blocking the pitch, dodging around the stunned fielders, running with the ball balanced on his bat in to the outfield, and flinging the ball at the backstop of an adjacent field, thinking it was the opposite goal. Or something like that. I loved that scene.
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Jan 21, 2017 03:58
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Prolonged Priapism posted:Yeah the I think the closest American analogue to that scene would be a new batter in a baseball game suddenly using his bat like a lacrosse stick, catching/blocking the pitch, dodging around the stunned fielders, running with the ball balanced on his bat in to the outfield, and flinging the ball at the backstop of an adjacent field, thinking it was the opposite goal. Or something like that. I loved that scene. Soccer player is a striker, picks up a pass with his hands, charges through his defense and drop-kicks the ball into his own goal. Calmly walks off. 
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Jan 21, 2017 14:06
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Rereading it is pretty great too because whenever the other characters talk to Stephen about the game he always refers to it as the wrong game and everyone does that thing they do when Stephen says weird things and respectfully ignores it
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Jan 22, 2017 13:26
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I'm really enjoying Fortune, I think "There followed a description of the wit," is the most "Patrick O'Brian thing" I've ever read in the series. I was wondering, though: in this book and Desolation Jack's ships are in danger of sinking and in both cases they make way for Brazil. Why do they not go to Africa? Are they really sailing that far out?
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Jan 24, 2017 22:01
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Professor Shark posted:I was wondering, though: in this book and Desolation Jack's ships are in danger of sinking and in both cases they make way for Brazil. Why do they not go to Africa? Are they really sailing that far out? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds Unless you are really far south, getting to Brazil is a lot faster than getting to Africa from much of the southern Atlantic.
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Jan 24, 2017 22:16
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