2 ms·
I absolutely adore the Hornblower books. Almost anything by CS Forester, really. Patrick O'Brien's books are too dry for me. There's lots of characters stoppin
by legitster 3y ago
I absolutely adore the Hornblower books. Almost anything by CS Forester, really.
Patrick O'Brien's books are too dry for me. There's lots of characters stopping and explaining naval terminology to each other, or long conversations about feelings and posturing and etc.
In comparison, Forester writing really captures the adventure and gives you the spirit of the era in much less verbose but sharper prose.
- hyperbovine 3y agoIt's dry in the sense the same sense Jane Austen's fiction is dry: it spends a lot of time chronicling the everyday minutiae of a bygone era. But whereas Austen was writing about her contemporaries, O'Brian does so at a remove of two centuries. As a literary and research achievement it's just .. stunning. I re-read this series at least once every decade, and each time my awe over what he has managed to accomplish in these books somehow increases. There is an old NYT book review (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/06/books/an-author-i-d-walk-the-plank-for.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/06/books/an-author-i-d-walk-...) that expresses it better than I can.