|
I decided to start re-reading and figured I'd better check on the existence of goons. Goons found. There are definitely some things I either missed or didn't get when I first read these. Regarding best quotes, I laughed for about fifteen minutes in Post Captain when a ship's boy comes to Jack's cabin. (Paraphrasing) "And I suppose they sent you to get the key to the keel lock?" "Yes sir, Bonden said the gunner's daughter might have it, but Mr ABC said he wasn't married". Delay in reading for a tad while I review the engagement between Surprise, the China Fleet, and Linois. The explanation at http://web.mit.edu/hwebb/www/surprise.html#day1 makes a few incorrect statements, but points out contradictions that I noted when I was reading it. I eventually "gave up and enjoyed it" so I could return later and deal with it. There was something in Post Captain's action that bothered me as well, but I don't rightly remember which it was. ps. Also rather funny in Surprise when Maturin gets a camel, apologizes to it before mounting, makes some comment about having no interest in being given a woman, then the camel driver goes on for a few minutes about how all the ladies of pleasure are icky and shouldn't he like a nice clean boy instead. (Might have time to look them up tomorrow) p.p.s. quote:... it sent the bread-barge careering over the table, and a midshipman into Jack's cabin, with the news that the wind was shifting into the east, a little mouse-like child, stiff in his best uniform, with his dirk at his side --- he had slept with it. p3s. quote:'Sahib, at once. Does the sahib prefer a male elephant or a female elephant?' PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Nov 28, 2017 |
#
¿
Nov 28, 2017 01:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:40 |
|
|
Well top it the proverbial nob, I didn't recall that Stephen performed skull surgery on (at least) two sailors. (M+C, and Mauritius).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2017 00:59
|
|
|
Yeah I've had hernia surgery and I cannot even begin to fathom a concept of how this was done without anesthesia and strong antiseptics. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2017 01:07
|
|
|
It's rather fortunate that alcohol plus significant pain causes most to pass out. Also fortunate that pain receptors are only on the surface. Probably why cauterization was so popular; much faster than stitches, for which they give locals these days. At least with an open surgery, once the spreaders are in, assuming the operating table is stable  there won't be much to feel.Surely there are happier topics. Back to fun quotes! quote:He returned to the wheel, the figures turning smoothly in his mind, checked and rechecked with the same satisfying result. Then, having stepped to the lee-rail, there to throw up the aged Bath bun and the glass of Marsala that he had just swallowed, committing them to the sea with long-accustomed ease, he addressed the officer of the watch... PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Dec 15, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2017 06:59
|
|
|
Indeed I remember "fuggin" appearing, so I've been a bit stunned to not see it. It's always --- missing (yes, rendered like that, em-dashed). It's been a dozen years since my first full reading, so it'll be fun to see when it fuggin begins.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2017 01:45
|
|
|
quote:'Make a lane there', he said, addressing the penguins as he hurried Stephen down the road that countless generations of the birds had made.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2017 00:53
|
|
|
Raskolnikov2089 posted:I believe this is also the same book where he dissects a corpse, takes a break and uses the same scalpel to carve the chicken he's having for lunch. At the beginning of Fortune of War, Stephen surprises everyone in the cricket game. I had to look it up online to be sure, but pob style suggests it was a standard Stephen blunder and it seems his actions were not cricket.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2017 23:08
|
|
|
For any in search of wonderful anecdotes and quotes, I might recommend the second chapter of The Fortune of War when Jack and Stephen are guests on a ship returning to England. Jack spends his time on educating the youngsters, who pay about as much attention to their studies as students of today; one's mother writes to tell him to brush his teeth up and down, one gets whipped for how he describes Abraham, and one describes the chord of an arc instead of the sine, but doesn't notice his mistake even when Jack asks, "and how is that related to the chord of the arc?". Stephen is forced to transfer "several tons" of minerals and specimens between two ships in 53 minutes, is flustered over his collection flying all over the ship unstowed, has troubles with unhappy wombats, unhappy lieutenants, fails to choose the lesser of two weevils, and gives his usual dinner speeches having to be saved by Jack. There are also a few amusing side characters; the temporary switches to Cockney are quite fun to read aloud. The mirth is so well consolidated I daren't attempt copying it all here.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2017 01:00
|
|
|
Phy posted:Thinking about it a little more, I now choose to believe Stephen's so good at what he does that he did it when even O'Brian wasn't looking. Maybe I brought this up before, but I never figured out what happened about that duel over a comment about Diana between Jack and Stephen. There was significant practice and preparation, and certainly something else came up, but it never seemed to actually get resolved in the text. Maybe I've been laughing so hard lately that I've forgotten.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2017 01:28
|
|
|
Twas a day later and a few score pages past, but I remembered I was going to keep an eye open for the first occurrence, which seems to be The Fortune of War Chapter Eightquote:'I ain't Joe', said Jack.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2017 06:27
|
|
|
quote:... Having drunk a certain amount of champagne he said, "That's very well. But I tell you what, Bullock, just you mix me a glass of bosun's grow, will you?" ZekeNY posted:Aubrey sends a wonderful apology for calling Stephen a bastard ("a common expression to do with birth, that might have been taken to have a personal bearing")
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2017 08:07
|
|
|
Sitting in the Red Sea with the sun baking everything, "Will I call for another pot of this admirable sherbet, the only cool thing in creation, perhaps...". So they have a solar powered refrigeration unit onboard? Or they're serving a mint-flavored concoction that has been cooled to "room temperature" (presumably above 100F at this point)? I thought only Willy Wonka could make ice cream that doesn't melt in the hot sun. What is this sherbet of which Stephen speaks? Edit: Whelp it wasn't in Sea of Words, hence my obvious confusion, but it seems wikipedia knows, so I'll go with my guess of "mint-flavored" something or another. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Jan 19, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2018 10:38
|
|
|
Sherbet comes up a few times in Treason's Harbor, but indeed they were sitting in the barky just after their return march across the dessert. Later it specifically says "chilled", so it either has to be spring water or deep water chilling. Evaporative cooling seems less likely and Venturi cooling wasn't applied before steam engines, afaik. I have to wonder if it was like modern sherbet American, iced, or if it was gelatinous from beef stock, or if it was more like heavy cream. Perhaps the gastronomic companion knows, but I don't have a copy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2018 01:48
|
|
|
Zoh well, and it's not on the wiki either. The answers here are good enough for me, and deep water cooling is certainly viable. Thanks for bearing with my silly questions. I'm almost done with 10 and still rather excited for the series. When I read this last I was so busy with grad school then jobs and depression that it kinda became a chore to get from 5 to 20, and probably took a year or two. Other than a short break for a week or two, I've been reading straight through this time. Honestly though I'm past the point of remembering much. I remembered the diving bell, marching across the desert, and the guest that liked diving and swimming who got chomped up (but I thought that was Jagiello), and I remembered the chelengk for some reason. I thought the bell lasted a lot longer but maybe there will be another. In 9 they set hawsers up the hill in order to hoist up cannons but it's abandoned. I still remember a similar scenario being carried out in full, with Jack being happy handling that type of 'work' (gambit). I might be conflating it with some caper where they hide on the back side of an island with a cliff, hoist cannons to the top, and pepper the enemy when they sail between that and the adjacent cliff. But sheesh with ten remaining I'm forgetting a lot and looking forward to it! Thanks for listening.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2018 18:34
|
|
|
Finished the books before the movie existed. It was time to read them all again from start to finish (instead of the piecemeal I had been doing) so I searched for the thread. Very happy to be reading. I managed to recover my idea of Aubrey and Maturin, which had been somewhat perverted by the movie.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2018 01:22
|
|
|
Polikarpov posted:Its a different drink from what we think of as Sherbet Hard to believe that we're going to need to engage an historian to figure out what sherbet they were consuming!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2018 19:31
|
|
|
While I would not expect much of lofty sails at 100% humidity, surely with the wind you could have arranged a bit of evaporative cooling? Also I lied, I'm on ten now and have seen a few terms that I can't even place from context. I'll have to flip back some pages to find them; the only one I remember is after they paint the ship then "Badger-Bag comes aboard to shave the crew". http://www.cannonade.net/static_map.php?map_name=HMS_Surprise&id=114512
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2018 14:57
|
|
|
I found another googly book that mentioned Neptune as well. Many thanks. "..., something hairy in the background that might have been a sloth or an anteater or even a doormat but that it farted from time to time, looking round censoriously on each occasion, ..."  Edit: And how I managed to miss the horseshoe splice until now I shall not guess. Edit: Remembered another one, the Molter Vivace pun. Definitely had to look up that one. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jan 28, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2018 23:34
|
|
|
Ah that is a much better summary. Hazing. Makes sense now. Just finished 11 having no recollection of anything other than the appearance of Samuel the son, which I didn't realize right away but remembered before it was explained. Also the episode with Jack and the pillory, though I had not remembered the outcome. I have a few more images in mind that have yet to happen, but I can't give them much order. Steady as she goes, onward to The Letter of Marque.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2018 04:25
|
|
|
I was actually sad because the prelude said that he kept to the true account, but there's only 1.5 pages where the terribly ill lawyer gives his disconnected account of the proceedings. I was really hoping for some in-court dialogue at least. Oh well, I'll have to scratch that itch by watching 'Witness for the Prosecution' again.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2018 20:06
|
|
|
Wow so the middle-ending of Thirteen Gun got a bit tedious, along with the start of Nutmeg. I'm fairly certain I appreciated the jungle scenes and natural history a bit more than fifteen years ago, but then they got shipwrecked, which is an okay cliffhanger ending, but which was disappointing. I remembered a few things from Nutmeg, but not that opening. I remembered the whole bank thing but that was fairly well foreshadowed and I forgot that paperwork legalities saved him. I was on the last chapter before the platypus realization kicked in, at which point I knew that was going to be the last paragraph ten pages hence. Halfway through Truelove but not remembering much of the plot.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2018 06:37
|
|
|
The last fifty pages of Wine Dark Sea contain perhaps the greatest number of ridiculous munged metaphors of the series, both from Jack and Stephen. Whereas one usually stumbles and notes the attempt isn't quite right, the other charges ahead blindly. If you've read them you know who is whom. We have some new readers! Time to use those spoiler tags. I remembered approximately zero of Wine, though I somehow knew what was up with the screwed up sea colors and wind in the beginning. The ending is actually really good and hard to put down because they're suddenly being chased and ice is looming and it's scary to think that POB would end it there without resolution which he did once before. Oh yes, I also remembered the mercury poisoning, but thought that they spent half a book or more trying to cure it. Maybe that's later. And some laughter... "As for the boat itself let it be tossed off with a round turn" "she lost the mast, the spar, the thing in front --- the bowsprout" "He counted his chickens without his host" Also I only recently realized that perhaps there's something British blocking me from fully grasping... "Do you know about duty?" "I believe I have heard it well spoken of". Yes I get it, and it's not the first appearance of the phrase, but I just decided that maybe I don't actually know what tone of voice was used. I've always imagined the smoothest delivery, no emphasis, but it seems much more likely that a fractious tone would have been used. But then surely they wouldn't get along so well. "Oh she has a hull as well, has she? I was not aware." Edit: Content additions concluded. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 1, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2018 00:32
|
|
|
Rut roh, two hundred pages of Yellow Admiral then only two more to go. How will I survive after I finish?  Edit: Other than a short break, I've been cracking on. I guess I started mid November. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 9, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2018 00:48
|
|
|
Posted on this page above that I too encountered tedium at the end of Thirteen Gun, but I kept going until it got interesting again. Just finished Yellow Admiral, and the last two are very likely to be done in a fortnight, putting me around four months for the series. I probably remember more of the earlier books because I've read them more than once; I know I restarted at least once, but also that I started in the middle during a later attempt. I'll have to think about a reread, but maybe at a different pace, two or three a year, but I don't know if I can keep focus like that. This thing with the digitalis in Yellow Admiral. The ship's doctor provides a broken story about the patient dosing himself. Did the doctor actually do it out of spite against the old hard-nose?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2018 00:22
|
|
|
 The very last word on the very last page has passed mine eye.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2018 22:43
|
|
|
I forgot that Diana was dead until he told Jack he was going to propose to Christine, and I thought she (Christine) was dead because of the way Jack is crying over her in Sophie's letter, which I read that paragraph three times before concluding she must have died. All done and on to other things, but still have fond memories. Stephen, have that thing stop chewing on my hat.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 23:48
|
|
|
Well not so gentle, but polite. :P In modern parlance, Jag practically comes across as gay at the beginning because he's always running away from the women or otherwise trying to avoid their slobbering. At the same time, he too seems to be a gentleman; I think he'd be more likely to say, "Yeah get your divorce and we'll talk". Were they seen together? Most likely. Was he taking advantage of her by standing beside her elegance at endless parties? Yeah probably. Was she milking the eminent Doctor's name at those parties? Yeah probably that too. Were they waking up together? No that's too romantic for Diana  I never thought they were in any case. Was she having sex with random stable boys? ... Uncertain.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2018 23:57
|
|
|
Murgos posted:It’s hard to come it high over someone when the service values them more than you by a considerable margin. That aside, there's a more subtle issue similar to a parent-child relationship that even a captain lacks sufficient knowledge to know precisely what the surgeon is doing. At least with a crew, you have a chance of realizing you'll be killed in action by your own men if you pay attention. When it comes to the physical line, however, you might well be unconscious when someone who doesn't like you decides accidentally (on purpose) that other patients are a higher priority. And then there's the simple power held even by one as tiny and unimposing as Stephen Maturin, as he said to Jack, "Remove your trousers and bend over that table".
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2018 04:50
|
|
|
After all we're talking about a regular boring doctor that randomly appears, not Stephen.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2018 02:04
|
|
|
Tis quoted in the provided link. 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2018 23:23
|
|
|
Genghis Cohen posted:It is the end of Treason’s Harbour, the ship is the Pollux.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2018 23:27
|
|
|
Molybdenum posted:I liked especially all the hoisting up of cannon above a town, firing a few shots to show how screwed their opponents were and just waiting for the white flag. There's also the one where a crew member climbs up a steep cliff to set up the tackle, then they send up some chasers to lob into the bay on the other side. (My memory is rather bad for titles, though.)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 23:13
|
|
|
See of Words has lots of pictures and diagrams. Perhaps not the detail to build a vessel of your own, but probably enough.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 23:59
|
|
|
Remember to take your diving bell! 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2018 23:13
|
|
|
I've maybe read the series 2.3 times, but the last time was the first "success". Lots of restarts or picking up in the middle a decade ago. I guess I don't do too well only reading one book a quarter or something. I definitely have to mainline it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2018 23:19
|
|
|
We need a lego version; not my thing, just saying. It would be really cool if you could just get the plans for the real vessel and scale them down yourself. Call up HMS records, then modify to get it to float in your bathtub. Apparently they are in Gardiner - Robert Gardiner's Warships of the Napoleonic Era (Chatham Publishing, 1999).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2018 00:19
|
|
|
Well you see the French don't have tea time but they do have a flag washing hour.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2018 00:51
|
|
|
It probably doesn't make a very good story if the main characters have romantic relationships with zero problems. If you look to some of the secondary characters, I seem to recall that you will find happier relationships, though that could also be that the troubles are simply not discussed. Here I'm thinking of a few lieutenants, the master, etc. I haven't read any of the other authors under discussion. I do have one historical fiction where it's fairly clear that the author read a bunch of O'Brian, so the book contains the relevant nautical and naval details, but many of the cultural and political aspects that we find Aubrey/Maturin trapped within are left out (in the case to focus on a different topic, but for those other authors my guess would be that we now have different genres for that, either mystery or suspense or true histories). I'm not really in a position to make much of a literary statement nor contrast action series' accuracy with a historical fiction romance novel so yeah. Laugh it up fuzzball. Next post.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2019 02:52
|
|
|
I know that they ran crack frigates and painted and polished, but I can't look at those pictures without laughing and thinking how much dirt and grime and sea water and lamp smoke and fumes and run-on sentences and darkness would exist in Jack's day. Load those decks with supplies and tools and sheeting, grating, coils of rope, and things would start to look a lot less inviting. I love the dark and cold but  I would probably have a mental break stuck that close to so many people. They would throw me over with Hollum, unless they put me on the Stately or something.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2019 04:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:40 |
|
|
Rereading it... ... Is like being the captain of Surprise for the first time. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2019 07:30
|
|