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I've been meaning to read these ever since I saw the movie, and even more so since they were recommended by one of my favourite authors, but somehow never got around to it. I suppose now would be a good time to start. Also of interest - the Patrick O'Brien Mapping Project, which uses Google Maps to plot out all the book's voyages. (Spoilers, obviously.)
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Mar 7, 2011 06:16
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I bet you thought Riggs and Murtaugh were gay too. 
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Mar 9, 2011 06:34
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This might be a dumb question, but I've looked around... has nobody ever, in this over-saturated age, done an Aubrey-Maturin podcast? I've done some googling around and have only found the occasional episode of film review podcasts that will talk about the movie. I'd really love something that would do like an in-depth recap of a book per episode (ideally spoiler free since I'm only halfway through the series), but it looks like there's nothing whatsoever.
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Nov 3, 2019 21:57
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PlushCow posted:Finally finished my series re-read book 3, HMS Surprise. Lots of highs in this one (Jack and the sloth a favorite) and some real lows (the child Dil, Stephen granting her wishes, and the conclusion of that plotline got me teary-eyed again). Not to mention Stephen and Diana What exactly is the deal with the child in India? I was still coming to grips with O'Brian's prose when I read book 3 and never really grasped this, though I distinctly remember the imagery of Stephen standing at the shore after her funeral pyre. The other fantastic piece of imagery I remember is towards the end when he feels the outline the ring in the letter he received from Diana, and walks allll the way up the volcano slope to sit in a patch of snow and cry. Also the other really heartbreaking thing in that book, and a mark of how subtle he can be, is when that officer Nicholls (or whatever his name was) rows Stephen out to an islet and is talking about how his marriage has broken down and he got no post at their last stop, and Stephen reassures him they probably just outsailed the mail ships, and there'll be post waiting for him in Rio. Then the storm breaks and he gets killed and weeks later they're in Rio and Jack gives Stephen his letters and Stephen says "Was there any post for Nicholls?" and Jack just says "Nicholls? No, I don't think so" and the conversation immediately moves on. The poor bastard 
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Jan 21, 2020 21:28
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Kylaer posted:Yes, that's what happens, but I think freebooter is asking why it happens, why O'Brian thought that would be a good story arc to include, what it's supposed to illustrate. Yeah I got the impression it was involved in his espionage work and he was trying to recruit her as an informant? It's been ages since I've read it and like I said I was still getting to grips with his very dense writing style, so I may be way off.
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Jan 22, 2020 01:55
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On my first-time readthrough, up to The Reverse of The Medal, and you know what, is there anything illegal or immoral about insider trading if the tip-off is that the stock's going to rise, not crash? (I presume there will turn out to be more to it than this).
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Jan 22, 2020 04:19
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PlushCow posted:Here's one of the real life influences on the novels and his involvement in the scandal that can probably explain it well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald#Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud Yeah, O'Brian mentions this in the introduction but I didn't look it up because I wanted to go into the plot blind. Raskolnikov2089 posted:I've said it before in this thread, one of my absolute favorite scenes in literature is in this book. I tear up every time. I had a friend say the very same thing just the other day! But I've been spoiled on a few events in the series and I suspect I can guess what it is given the title of the next book - Stephen buys the Surprise? Anyway, "spoiler" is an odd word, the joy of a story is in the telling.
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Jan 22, 2020 23:52
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Just finished it and yes, that was quite lovely. It occurs to me that, if he'd so chosen, this was just about a book in which O'Brian could have concluded the series. The crescendo of a career marked by half the Navy turning out to protect and salute a legend, Jack making his transition from the official service to privateering, Stephen's enemies in the intelligence service exposed and about to reap their just deserts - the only story arc which would feel incomplete is Stephen's relationship with Diana. But of course we are all very glad he chose to carry on. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The Patrick Tull audiobook version of this scene gets every time (and the narrator almost gets a bit choked up himself), and I've read/listened to it 3-4 times? I never listen to audiobooks but I hear so many people gush about Tull's narration that I'm quite tempted to pick them up for when I finish and then re-read the series. On that note - I always assumed Stephen has an English accent when speaking English, because of his upbringing, but he seems to interject "Sure" into his sentences a lot and I wonder what O'brian intended. Do the narrators give him an accent? Or is mimicking accents not the done thing with audiobooks? This is one of the few pieces of fiction I've read where the dialogue is so true to its time and place that I do effortlessly put it into the proper accents inside my head, rather than my own subconscious Australian voice. I remember reading Terry Pratchett talking about how odd it had been for him to see a Sydney stage production in which Death had an Australian accent and thinking "what are you talking about, that's perfectly normal." On a similar note again, this is the first book in which I realised Padeen is not a deaf-mute but simply an Irish monoglot. (Though I only registered him as a character at all a few books ago; I've no idea when he's actually introduced.)
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Jan 23, 2020 08:07
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ulmont posted:Explicitly not period accurate for deadwood - the curses that would have been used at the time would not have the same impact on modern listeners. Well, drat your eyes!
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Apr 26, 2020 10:51
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Just finished The Letter of Marque. What's the deal with Stephen and Padeen hiding Stephen's freshly laundered shirts on top of the wardrobe (I think that's what they're doing?) and being ashamed when the maid catches them? Also I love how Stephen is an exceptionally intelligent and perceptive man, yet still utterly capable of deluding himself that he doesn't have a problem with opium.
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May 22, 2020 02:39
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I'm only up to book 13, but it's striking how Jack and Stephen have virtually nothing in common except music, and yet they are great friends. I am actually hard-pressed to remember moments when they sit and pass the time together that doesn't involve music: their dinners are usually larger social affairs, and their private conversations are usually about critically important matters relating to their duties. (The one exception I can remember in the recent books I've read is, I think, The Ionian Mission where Stephen is excited about his diving bell and Jack is also sincerely fascinated, asking him questions about it, until he realises he's expected to ship it.) But this doesn't actually feel off-putting; they've been friends so long that it's more like they're family. Brothers who can utterly trust each other and rely on each other, even when they're very different people. IMO this is best illustrated when they go overboard in the Pacific: it's entirely due to Stephen's clumsiness that they're both doomed, yet Jack is gentle with him the whole time, and never once comes close to bitterness about it even in his internal thoughts. It reminds me of another great friendship in historical fiction, Call and Gus in the Lonseome Dove series. They meet in their teens and are inseparable partners, yet Gus at one point says to Call something along the lines of "if we met for the first time today, I doubt we'd have ten words to say to each other." The friendship is in the shared history, not necessarily in their personalities.
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May 27, 2020 09:49
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The Virgin Maturin vs the Chad Aubrey
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May 28, 2020 00:36
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Lockback posted:Stephen also tries to risk/throw away his standing to bust Padeen out off Prison Island. I love how matter of fact Stephen is about it, despite it potentially ending his career, and maybe Jack's to boot. As someone who's halfway through the series I do sometimes risk these spoiler tags (it hardly "spoils" the joy of these books to know certain plot points) and I like knowing there are still many diverse adventures in store. When is Padeen introduced? I don't remember it. I think the first I recall him is in Master and Commander, and it wasn't until The Reverse of the Medal that I realised he's not actually deaf-mute but rather that he only speaks Irish.
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May 30, 2020 09:14
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PlushCow posted:I really struggled with the slang when I started the series too and it really dragged for me because I wanted to know things, but this thread had some really good advice and that is not to get caught up on the slang; O'Brian uses the doctor character Stephen Maturin, who knows nothing about the sea, as a stand-in for the reader to explain things he wants you to really understand, so beyond those times it's OK to let your mind glaze over the nautical parlance. This is good advice (12 books in and I still only have a dim grasp of what's going on during the naval battles, and don't mind) though I think the books can be quite dense and confusing even before they go to sea. It's an Austenian prose style which can be off-putting for people unused to it, and O'Brian makes no concessions to a reader who isn't fully engaged with every sentence. One thing that really threw me was the lack of transitory exposition; Jack will mention that he has an appointment at the Admiralty later that day and then the very next line of dialogue is somebody speaking to him at the Admiralty, hours later, that sort of thing. It's not something that can be read with half your attention elsewhere. I remember finding the first two books in particular - maybe even the first four - quite complicated and difficult to follow, and I don't know how much of that was me eventually growing accustomed to the style, or O'Brian eventually settling into a bit of a lower gear? It helps that after the first two books there's comparatively less time spent in Europe amid the various political machinations of the Royal Navy.
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Jun 25, 2020 00:48
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J Strange & Norrell is one of the best books of the last 20 years. I think it was Hiernoymous who said the only other author who writes historical fiction as well as O'Brian is Mary Renault, though her preferred period is antiquity. I've had The King Must Die on my TBR pile for a while and still haven't gotten round to it.
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Jul 4, 2020 10:44
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I recall an anecdote about an American expatriate becoming pregnant in France, and asking a French mother whether she would drink alcohol in pregnancy. And the French woman was aghast and said, "Oh, no, never! Only wine."
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Jul 8, 2020 14:05
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If there was ever a time for this show to be a huge-budget HBO drama it's... well, not now in the pandemic, but it was after Game of Thrones wrapped for sure. With some adaptive editing the books even break down well to seasons of about 10 episodes each, maybe three per book: 1-3: Introduction, introduction of their romantic partners and their first feud, first major intercontinental voyage and then poor Stephen's heartbreak in the Canaries (Skip 4, which I think puts Jack in a position of higher authority too soon and which I suspect is the result of O'Brien still not thinking he was going to spend the rest of his life writing these books) 5-6: Desolation Island and the Fortune of War are an obvious two-parter 7-9: European cruising 10: This could easily be a whole season 11-12: Fall from grace, then redemption And 13 is the next one I need to read, which I understand kicks off a 5-book voyage.
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Aug 12, 2020 04:59
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Also speaking of the film, this paragraph which ends the New Yorker's review has stayed with me: What the novels leave us with, and what emerges more fitfully from this film, as if in shafts of sunlight, is the growing realization that, although our existence is indisputably safer, softer, cleaner, and more dependable than the lives led by Captain Aubrey and his men, theirs were in some immeasurable way better—richer in possibility, and more regularly entrancing to the eye and spirit alike. As Stephen says of the Iliad, “The book is full of death, but oh so living.” Just so; if you died on board the Surprise, it would not be for want of having lived. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/17/ruling-the-waves
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Aug 12, 2020 05:00
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Notahippie posted:Yeah, agreed. I'm not sure the foremast sailors would agree, especially the ones who were pressed. And even the officers would probably find a rich-rear end life in New York or London or wherever to be pretty compelling compared to the life they lived aboard ship. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but it's the "entrancing to the eye and spirit" line, I think, that resonates with me? There's a beautifully written moment in Desolation Island when Maturin sees a blue whale surface alongside the ship just for a moment before diving again, and is utterly enchanted by it. And what struck me about that moment was that they're at the very edge of the charted world, in this cold and distant ocean, and for him to glimpse that as a naturalist is an opportunity he never in a million years could have dreamed of, let alone striven for or organised. Whereas I would go on school excursions as a kid to the maritime museum and see the big life-size plastic model of a blue whale and be like, yeah, whatever, big deal. I've gone whale watching. I've swum with a whale shark. It was great. But, you know, I can look up pictures of it whenever I want and read all about it on the internet. There's another wonderful moment in The Reverse of the Medal, I think, when someone is describing a balloon flight to Maturin, who's enraptured. And it's because O'Brien is such a brilliantly descriptive writer that it works, but also because it throws into contrast how miraculous human flight is when we today take it utterly for granted. Now it sounds like I'm romanticising the past which isn't what I meant to do... I guess you're right. I am searching for meaning, and romanticising the past.
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Aug 13, 2020 04:23
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I mentioned a while back that I was surprised nobody's ever done an Aubrey-Maturin re-read podcast, but checked again today and some guys started one in COVID lockdown: https://lubbershole.podbean.com/
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Aug 17, 2020 04:29
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I think there's a reason I'm more inclined to romanticise Maturin's life than Aubrey's. You're absolutely right of course that being a gentleman naturalist back then was a privilege afforded only to the wealthy, and of course it's a better thing that in the modern world far more people have the opportunity to shape the course of their lives. But there was a piece I was reading about the series and specifically Maturin as a naturalist (which I annoyingly can't find now) which talks about how different it would have been to have been a scientist of the natural world back when the wilderness was "dangerous, not endangered." More exciting, and certainly less depressing. Because one thing that indisputably makes these days different from those days is that we're in the middle of a mass extinction event and a climate crisis on an overpopulated planet. There's something alluring about winding the clock back to the days when you could sail over the horizon and set foot on an unspoiled island, rather than one littered with plastic and with all the coral bleached. And I realise their time was at the vanguard of that. But it's Aubrey's job which, if you peel back the layers, is ultimately about securing sea routes, colonies, empires and trade; Maturin's natural philosophy is the nobler pursuit. Notahippie posted:The thing is, I think that's more a reflection of two things. One is that you can still do that stuff - you can go explore and experience the world, or become a scientist staking out new areas of human knowledge, or whateve, but it's hard and expensive and most people don't get to. But that's true about back then, too... we just don't hear about the people who didn't. The other thing is that if you get to get out there... if you join the military or are born to a rich family or get a PhD or whatever, in the modern world the actual experience of wonder or discovery is watered down by all the other stuff you're feeling. Like, just like Steven I've been to a Buddhist temple in Java (not one in a caldera, unfortunately) and it was amazing and mindblowing and wonderous but I also remember that my feet hurt and my rear end itched and everything was hot and muggy and I'll admit that watered down the transcendence a little bit. I definitely feel that. It didn't take me very long to realise that looking at pretty temples is very nice in Japan in the snow, but when I'm in Thailand and it's 38 degrees and the humidity is 90%, those things can contains the living Buddha incarnate for all I care, I'm going back to the A/C at the hostel. Also, all those glossy Lonely Planet guidebook photos sure are good at avoiding how much mind-boggling poverty and squalor there is in the developing world.
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Aug 19, 2020 00:03
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Zoracle Zed posted:So the single upside to the pandemic for me has been discovering this series. Currently on The Fortune of War. Haven't seen this one quoted yet: I think this is the first moment that made me actually lol. It's the frank, immediate bluntness of the question, served up as a genuine inquiry to one's health, that really does it.
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Nov 1, 2020 07:23
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Reading through the series for the first time and just finished Nutmeg of Consolation, and I'm curious about something - don't answer this if it's answered in Stephen's thoughts or journals in the next novel, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not. After Stephen has arranged the rendezvous with Padeen and then Jack rejects the notion of helping him abscond, Stephen asks Martin to give some possession of his to his Diana - implying he may never see her again - and tells the boat crew that Martin will be returning, conspicuously not mentioning himself. What exactly was he planning to do? Take off with Padeen and go live with the United Irishmen who are mentioned as having escaped into the bush near Newcastle? edit - I'll add that I made it this deep into the series (which I love and admire immensely) before finally bothering to google and learn that "the weather gauge" does not relate to a barometer and "heaving the log" does not mean chucking your documents overboard because you expect you're about to be captured freebooter fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Feb 11, 2021 |
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Feb 11, 2021 08:15
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Genghis Cohen posted:I'd assumed that having been refused help by Jack, he was just intending to find some other way off Australia with Padeen. I can't imagine he intended to stay in the area permanently - apart from anything else, I think it's mentioned the United Irishman might regard him as a traitor or informant, because of his employment by the British Government. Honestly I don't think he had a firm plan at all, he was just unwilling to sail away leaving Padeen behind. Yeah, I remember they get mentioned as a potential danger to him, but I thought maybe he'd talk his way out of that because otherwise there's no apparent reason for them being raised (other than to make it clear that when he spotted an old comrade on that ship at the start of the 13-Gun Salute he was also spotted in turn, which maybe has repercussions down the line.) A really interesting point on portraying how miserable convict Sydney was: right after they show up they see a flogging so bad that the subject walks away from the stage with his blood squelching in his shoes. I read that line and immediately knew O'Brian had read The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes; I read it years ago but that was definitely one of the most vivid descriptions that stuck in my mind. Then later I checked the foreword (I don't read them before the books because I don't want to spoil anything) and O'Brian sings its praises. Anyone who enjoyed these books should check it out, it's a really excellent and beautifully-written history book examining the convict transportation system and early colonial Australia.
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Feb 12, 2021 01:00
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I think Maturin is actually cast well, but having listened to all the Patrick Tull audiobooks of the series, I can't here the doctor in any voice but Tull's. It's a shame it didn't turn into a longer series-you would think a huge chunk of the cost was getting the ship built and once they had that it would be much cheaper to make subsequent movies or shows. I would really, really love to see a Game-of-Thrones-level-budget HBO adaptation of the books.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:55
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One of the most interesting deviations for me (having seen the movie long before I ever read the books) is the ending. From memory the film has just another sea battle and boarding sequence, so the end of the novel where they ended up stranded alongside the American crew who claim the war is over, but Jack doubts it, and the fantastic pressure cooker atmosphere of suspicion and tension that builds up on that island... that was really unique and cool. I can understand why they didn't have the time or the inclination to put that in the movie, but I think it's one of the best sequences O'Brian has written.
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Feb 18, 2021 08:31
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Lol I follow that guy on twitter and he was saying the other week these are the most boring books ever, but he appears to have been won over by the audiobooks
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Feb 23, 2021 23:46
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Tom Hardy is too quiet and low-key menacing. I'm honestly not sure which currently young actors in the late 20s to late 30s range I'd cast. (That is roughly Jack and Stephen's age at the very start of the series, right?)
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Feb 27, 2021 00:40
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:Oh, Bronson was cheery, alright. A manic, dangerous, brittle kind of cheery, but cheery nonetheless. Well then this is Awkward Davis. I do think Hardy has fallen into the Ryan Gosling pigeon hole: actually has range, but has been typecast to mostly be in serious, staring-into-your-soul-with-his-eyes roles for at least five years.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:57
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I agree that the bear scene a) is utterly unrealistic b) rules Also, gonna gripe about this because it's the only place that will get it: I'm slowly working my way through the series for the first time and saving the books for holiday or airplane reading because I know I will enjoy them, and also generally because I'm usually holidaying by the ocean or at least in new environs and that's what these books are all about, baby! (I read The Ionian Mission in one sitting on a 30-hour 3-leg flight from Australia to Europe.) I had an Easter long weekend by the sea and tried to finish up what I was already reading before then - because I'm also too neurotic to start one novel before finishing what I'm already on - but had a really busy week and so found myself still reading The Bell Jar (great novel but inescapably bleak) and A.A. Gill's last book of collected journalism (incredible writer whom I love but it's about refugees which is also inescapably bleak). I hosed up! I was on holiday, I wanted to read about my beloved boat boys!
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Apr 6, 2021 10:29
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Phenotype posted:I also liked the scene in The Letter of Marque when he tumbles down the stairs and injures himself, and the doctor who treats him, again, can't quite come out and say directly "you're an opium junkie", but takes no poo poo and strongly implies that he knows exactly what Stephen has been up to with his bottle. The scene where it actually happens (the fall itself, I mean) is the one that stands out most clearly in that book for me, it's just perfectly written. I'm not sure whether it's Stephen himself finally running face first into reality, or whether it was just the moment where I personally realised just how thoroughly he'd been bullshitting both himself and the reader. There's always so much going on in O'Brian's prose that a paragraph where Stephen mentions how much he's taking, or downplays how much that is, can easily be missed; but you can't really argue with something so vertiginous. It's like when you spill your beer at a pub and realise how drunk you are (but much worse).
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May 25, 2021 09:59
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thekeeshman posted:I hope it's good, but I gotta say I've been hoping we would get a big budget HBO-type series instead, the books are so rich I feel like they need some room to breathe. This has long been my pipe dream but I feel like producers fear (probably correctly) that while there would be a loyal market for that kind of period drama, it wouldn't have a broad enough appeal to become something like GOT and significantly recoup its costs. The film made a respectable profit, but sitting down to watch two hours of naval battles on the big screen is a different prospect than investing time into multiple seasons of a TV series on the small screen. I suppose the alternative would be to scale it down, remove a lot of the battles, film it on sets rather than on an actual working replica ship like the film was. (The TV series The Terror was entirely filmed indoors - the ship parts of it, anyway - and it looks fantastic, though to be fair they're frozen in the ice the entire series.) I wouldn't really mind that. I'm three quarters of the way through reading the series and will freely admit that I find the naval battles to be the least interesting part of them. Then if it actually picked up a following, you could expand the budget and do more exciting stuff. From memory the first couple of seasons of Game of Thrones were almost cartoonishly underfunded compared to the later ones.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:25
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The Lord Bude posted:I mean, Hornblower was pretty successful right? It was popular but it's harder to find the info about how financially successful it was, since it doesn't have clear box office figures the way a film does. I'd also argue that a pre-streaming-era show commissioned by a British broadcaster about the glory days of the Royal Navy can expect a certain level of reliability in the domestic British audience, whereas the same kind of story (and the very expensive filming requirements that go along with it) would be harder to sell in the HBO boardroom in Los Angeles. Having said that, the fact that.. a) The film was profitable and is a bit of a cult classic these days b) Game of Thrones was the biggest smash hit phenom of the last decade, when fantasy has never really been a popular film or TV genre ...would make a big budget HBO production much more likely than in the past. And to be clear, I also don't doubt it would be a financial and critical success in the long run - I think the problem would be convincing studios of that.
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Jun 6, 2021 09:23
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Aubrey/Maturin is a manners comedy as much as it is an action series. I don't know how you'd make *that* popular except by Pirates of the Carribean'ing "sure the homeless pirate boy can marry the governor's daughter" it all up. People loved Bridgerton... I think one of the issues even with just the books is that the kind of people who love, say, Jane Austen, are immediately put off by what appears at surface level to be a deeply masculine boys' adventure story.
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Jun 8, 2021 02:19
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Watched the movie last night for the first time, I realised, since I saw it on a four-inch screen in 2004 which wasn't exactly ideal (and was before I'd read the books). I'd forgotten what a genuinely excellent film it is - easily Weir's best. To the extent that the series is filmable at all, he nailed it. The bit where a semi-conscious Maturin is being stretchered onto the island and says to Jack something like "I hope this isn't on my account," and Jack just smiles at him and says "just needed to stretch my legs," is loving perfect. Russell Crowe is great. One thing that stood out to me was how weirdly sparse the captain's cabin seemed to be. I assume it's accurate because they knew their stuff, but I kept comparing it to the (equally accurate, I assume) captains' cabins in The Terror, in which Crozier and Fitzjames seemed to have way more fittings. Tables and desks and bookshelves and stuff. Is it because on an active warship the partitions always have to be removed and the captain's cabin regularly becomes part of the gun deck, so there's no room for clutter?
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Jun 26, 2021 07:22
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https://twitter.com/mtsw/status/1409678888758779904 Discuss.
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Jun 29, 2021 05:24
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Finished Far Side of the World. Holy hell the "Jonah" subplot is so much more grim than what was in the movie. I was generally pretty surprised how little the movie took from this book. I knew about the antagonists changing from American to French, of course, but really the book is a totally different animal aside from a few elements and characters. My favourite change is the climax. The movie's battle ending is fine, especially for the big screen, but the book's tense small-scale political pressure cooker where they're stranded on an island with people who may or may not still be their enemies is way more gripping. I haven't finished the series yet but it's easily one of my favourite setpieces so far. The others would be: Stephen and Jack going overboard in the same book; the Dutch warship chase in the southern seas; the Leopard's iceberg collision; Escape from Boston. Probably some others I'm forgetting for the moment, but these were definitely the most gripping.
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Sep 17, 2021 10:39
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Phy posted:Also, I've started into season 1 of The Terror and it definitely had me missing Jack and Stephen. I wonder what Jack would have made of screw-driven ships... Do I correctly remember him being rather skeptical of an early steam launch? This is IMO one of the most underrated series of the decade, you're in for a real treat.
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Sep 26, 2021 11:09
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Genghis Cohen posted:What's the 'Fake Irishman' thing? O'Brian spent much of his life implying he was Irish when he actually wasn't https://www.irishtimes.com/news/famous-non-irish-irishman-left-questioners-at-sea-when-they-asked-about-his-origins-1.231500
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Dec 27, 2021 02:14
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My favourite answer to the "turn the entire cast into muppets except one character remains human" meme is for everybody on the Surprise to be a muppet except the midshipman who gets bullied to suicide
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Dec 27, 2021 04:23
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