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Post by SailorBen on May 20, 2023 13:37:17 GMT -5
Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester. Read it before years ago but still a good story. I should have been a sailor. Loved the Hornblower series, will have to pick it up again. I found it more accessible than Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey & Maturin series (although those are terrific too). |
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Post by Ronv69 on May 20, 2023 14:40:38 GMT -5
Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester. Read it before years ago but still a good story. I should have been a sailor. Loved the Hornblower series, will have to pick it up again. I found it more accessible than Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey & Maturin series (although those are terrific too). I find the O'Brian books much better myself. I am considering starting them again as they are some of my favorite books. Are you a sailor, Ben? 😉 |
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Post by toshtego on May 20, 2023 17:57:25 GMT -5
Loved the Hornblower series, will have to pick it up again. I found it more accessible than Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey & Maturin series (although those are terrific too). I find the O'Brian books much better myself. I am considering starting them again as they are some of my favorite books. Are you a sailor, Ben? 😉 Alexander Kent, aka Douglas Reeman, is another author of period British naval fiction. Quite good, too. He was a veteran of the Royal Navy during WWII. |
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Post by Ronv69 on May 20, 2023 21:56:47 GMT -5
I find the O'Brian books much better myself. I am considering starting them again as they are some of my favorite books. Are you a sailor, Ben? 😉 Alexander Kent, aka Douglas Reeman, is another author of period British naval fiction. Quite good, too. He was a veteran of the Royal Navy during WWII. I have several of his novels on the Kindle from 2016. Sigh. I am really behind. |
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Post by SailorBen on May 21, 2023 0:36:09 GMT -5
Alexander Kent, aka Douglas Reeman, is another author of period British naval fiction. Quite good, too. He was a veteran of the Royal Navy during WWII. I have several of his novels on the Kindle from 2016. Sigh. I am really behind. Nice! I'll have to check out the Douglas Reeman books. Thanks for the recommendation, toshtego! Aye, Ronv69, more of a sailor at heart, though I did volunteer for a summer aboard the Lady Washington, a replica square rigged American merchant ship that had a role in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We sailed all over Puget Sound and took people out to do mock battles with our "sister ship" Hawaiian Chieftain. It was fun. |
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Post by mgtarheel on May 21, 2023 13:29:05 GMT -5
Home Fire by Dustin Stevens
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Post by Ronv69 on May 21, 2023 16:17:58 GMT -5
I have several of his novels on the Kindle from 2016. Sigh. I am really behind. Nice! I'll have to check out the Douglas Reeman books. Thanks for the recommendation, toshtego! Aye, Ronv69, more of a sailor at heart, though I did volunteer for a summer aboard the Lady Washington, a replica square rigged American merchant ship that had a role in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We sailed all over Puget Sound and took people out to do mock battles with our "sister ship" Hawaiian Chieftain. It was fun. I taught myself to navigate rivers from Life on the Mississippi. I taught myself sailing from the big Annapolis book on sailing. Started out with a Hobie 14, immediately moved up to a G-Cat 18. Sailed it around Galveston Bay for 5 years and sold it. Got busy, baby, etc and years went by. Around 95 I got a Macgregor 25 and spent 3 years fixing it up and adding accessories. Wife was always too busy with work or tired and the son couldn't care less about going outside. So I sold my dreams. I wanted to eventually get a Macgregor 65 or a catamaran. I had a friend with a Bluewater 54 and another with a Pacific Seacraft, but they are always in Bermuda or someplace like that when I have time. One of the best days of my life was sailing the G-Cat in a 45 knot breeze on a sunny day, standing on the back with the main sheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, watching the tell-tails and literally sailing a circle around a J-24. |
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Post by toshtego on May 22, 2023 18:13:22 GMT -5
A second hand copy of The Proud Tower arrived today. I hope to start it this evening. Looks promising.
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Zach
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Post by Zach on May 24, 2023 19:53:05 GMT -5
I LOVED Jimmy Durante as a kid, and I still do. I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too. - Mitch Hedberg
You saying that reminded me of Mitch.
Been away from the forums for a few weeks, just been so busy with work, gardening, family, and the lot. Finished up The whole Divine Comedy and it was alright and glad I read it, but fairly dry and boring. The shtick of the allegorical references just don't land because of how false it really all was what people believed in the 1300s. Stuff I've been reading from the 1800's holds up very well. Stuff from the 1300's is accidental comedy. So many references to Italians that Dante didn't like so he placed them in hell. Others, like famous Greek poets, Ovid, Virgil guiding Dante through inferno, purgatory, heaven, etc. are heavily backdated references where Dante decided the fates of all these famous writers that came before him. Eh, you'd have to research and get into it but it's still a great work for it's time.
I got my signed and notarized Easton Press copy of William Gibson's Neuromancer. Today a signed copy of T.J. Champitto's The Medina Device was supposed to arrive, will be here tomorrow.
About to start William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.
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Post by jeffd on May 24, 2023 22:21:29 GMT -5
... false it really all was what people believed in the 1300s. Stuff I've been reading from the 1800's holds up very well. Stuff from the 1300's is accidental comedy. So many references to Italians that Dante didn't like so he placed them in hell. I get what you are saying. But there is so much to it. So much. The part that was real was that the medieval mind believed in such a system more or less. It is neat to see how he ranks the different sins, and convicts himself of pride. The medieval mind and all that, I found fascinating. And also all the references, not just historical but mythological too. The veracity of it, or lack thereof, was the least important thing to me. (I read enough science for work LOL). There is a scene in Paradiso in the beginning where he looks down on the earth as he is ascending to heaven, and earth gets farther and farther away and he muses about how insignificant all of men's travails and conflicts and the stuff we worry about. are so puny and irrelevant in the grand scheme of the universe. Well.... I remember the same feeling when I saw the first earth rise pictures of Apollo 8, in the late 60s. Cool stuff. Good to know there are folks at least willing to give the classics a try! |
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Post by Ronv69 on May 27, 2023 0:15:19 GMT -5
Went ahead and read another Hornblower book, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I actually think that the Forester books and the O'Brien books complement each other. Different points of view. I started re-reading Master and Commander again today.
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Post by toshtego on May 27, 2023 13:06:29 GMT -5
Went ahead and read another Hornblower book, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I actually think that the Forester books and the O'Brien books complement each other. Different points of view. I started re-reading Master and Commander again today. You motivated me to order three second hand hardback copies of the series. I have not read them since 1980 or so. Overdue. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower and Hornblower and the Hotspur. That ought to keep me busy in the evenings for a while, eh? Forester was a fine writer and no library should be without. |
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Post by Ronv69 on May 27, 2023 16:12:05 GMT -5
Went ahead and read another Hornblower book, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I actually think that the Forester books and the O'Brien books complement each other. Different points of view. I started re-reading Master and Commander again today. Â You motivated me to order three second hand hardback copies of the series. I have not read them since 1980 or so. Overdue. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower and Hornblower and the Hotspur. That ought to keep me busy in the evenings for a while, eh? Forester was a fine writer and no library should be without. I read the Hornblower books originally in the early 60s. I didn't read the O'Brien books until the 90s-2000s. I am having a fine old time revisiting them. |
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