Book Recommendations?

Another space opera I've enjoyed that's a bit YA, but enjoyable is The Illuminae Files trilogy. They're written in a kind of documentary format, similar to World War Z, with lots of logs, journals, video processed by analysts, etc.

In audio, it even has a full cast like World War Z.

So I've been chewing away slowly at Master and Commander, which has been a very odd read. It feels like the author was trying to make it sound like a novel written during the Victorian era, aimed at Victorian readers, although I'm not sure actual English would have looked like that, yet, at the time.

It's been quite a slow read, because the characters are often choosing to do things for reasons that aren't immediately apparent and often aren't explained. It's sort of like reading three layers of book at once; you've got what happened, why it happened (which you have to figure out from the contextual clues), and then what knowledge was the reader supposed to already possess, such that the (rather confusing) explanations would have made perfect sense.

The book is fifty years old, now, and I'm curious as to whether a reader in the 1970s would have been as, well, at sea as I've often been. I've been able to parse things out and make satisfactory progress, but between the spare explanations and the rather turgid, indirect dialog, it's been quite slow. I often find myself just pausing and thinking about what I'm reading, which is something I don't typically do with fiction. That's usually between sessions or, at most, between chapters. Having to stop and reread paragraphs two or three times just to fully parse what's happened definitely pulls me out of flow state.

I like the story, and the characters are interesting, but it's not a particularly relaxing read. I gather there are twenty books in the series, but I think I may stop at one.

If you're into sailing ships, though, and you find the behavior of gentlemen and captains to be of interest, you might thoroughly enjoy it.

Malor wrote:

like the story, and the characters are interesting, but it's not a particularly relaxing read. I gather there are twenty books in the series, but I think I may stop at one.

O'Brian's writing improves a great deal over the first three books, if that is useful to you. Otherwise your impressions seem pretty on point for the books.

(I love them, personally.)

MikeSands wrote:
Malor wrote:

like the story, and the characters are interesting, but it's not a particularly relaxing read. I gather there are twenty books in the series, but I think I may stop at one.

O'Brian's writing improves a great deal over the first three books, if that is useful to you. Otherwise your impressions seem pretty on point for the books.

(I love them, personally.)

Be aware that the second book is the nadir of the entire series. It’s longer than most and written in a way that would have allowed O’Brian to stop after two books. Until the end. Almost like he couldn’t decide whether to continue or not.

At any rate, if you haven’t sailed much, and you continue the series, it might be worth picking up A Sea of Words as a reading companion. It defines a lot of the terms you’ll come across, has maps for some of the books, has essays describing the state of medicine and the Admirality at that tone, etc.

I personally found that series to be among the most rewarding of any I’ve ever read. It’s amazing that he made 6 months of travel through the open ocean so interesting.

O'Brian did years of research in the Admiralty archives, reading diaries, official reports and ship's logs and based the plot elements for his first few books on records he found there. (After that, he kept to the broad strokes of history but invented the details of ships, actions and personages.) The language is appropriate for the period (at least according to some historians of the period I know on this side of the Atlantic) and he does assume a knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars and the customs and practices of the Royal Navy. Not least of which is the technical particulars of ships of the time. He gets an awful lot of details right.

Wikipedia wrote:

One interviewer described the man in his late seventies as "a compact, austere gentleman. ... his pale, watchful eyes are clear and alert."[10] He is polite, formal and erudite in conversation, which erudition can be intimidating. Horowitz learned from those who worked with O'Brian, that the erudition did not go unnoticed, while they remained friends. "Richard Ollard, a naval historian, calls this particular habit, "blowing people out of the game." Ollard, who edited the early Aubrey/Maturin Novels, urged O'Brian to tone down the most obscure allusions, though the books remain crammed with Latin tags, antiquated medical terminology and an endless stream of marvellous sounding but impenetrable naval jargon. "Like many who have struggled themselves," Ollard said of his friend, "he thought others should struggle, too." One longtime acquaintance put it more bluntly: "Patrick can be a bit of a snob, socially and intellectually.""[10]
...
Patrick O'Brian once wrote "Obviously, I have lived very much out of the world: I know little of present-day Dublin or London or Paris, even less of post-modernity, post-structuralism, hard rock or rap, and I cannot write with much conviction about the contemporary scene."[13] This becomes obvious for readers of the Aubrey-Maturin Series, as he adopts a narrative voice contemporary with their setting.[10] Richard Ollard, in examining the general reception to O'Brian's books, suggests that O'Brian's naval officers would be able to talk with and recognise Jane Austen's characters.[8]

In addition to the period language, O'Brian is adept at using naval jargon with little or no translation for the "lubberly" reader. The combination of the historical-voice narration and naval terms may seem daunting at first to some readers; but most note that after a short while a "total immersion" effect results.[14] Occasionally, O'Brian explains obscure nautical terms by placing Stephen Maturin into the tutelage of seamen, allowing the author to vicariously teach the reader about various parts and functions of a period sailing vessel without breaking from the narrative. This was especially common early in the series, when Maturin was still new to the Royal Navy.

For what it's worth. Interestingly, one of the articles quoted a close friend of his who took him sailing, and noted that O'Brian had absolutely no "feel" himself for the boat or the wind, and the interaction between them. But he could certainly write about people who did.

Shook One by Charlemagne tha God.

I'm almost done with it and it's excellent. He has a psychiatrist writing a response to each of his chapters. It's about dealing with anxiety and being in therapy and coping with life. There is an example at the beginning of the book that is mentioned in one of the Amazon reviews that's a bit out there imo, but this is a book I'm thinking of buying after finishing the library book so I can own a copy. Highly recommended.

I think I broke the Goodreads recommendation engine. About the only two things these books are likely to share is a distant genre relationship.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/S1UhRQH.png)

(I read TekWar along with a "bad books" podcast. It is not a stellar example of the genre.)

Katy wrote:

I think I broke the Goodreads recommendation engine. About the only two things these books are likely to share is a distant genre relationship.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/S1UhRQH.png)

(I read TekWar along with a "bad books" podcast. It is not a stellar example of the genre.)

Yeah their recommendation engine is very hit or miss. One I saw recently was

Because you read The Franco-Prussian War:
The Hundred Years' War

I mean, that's not necessarily wrong but those two things have very little to do with each other aside from being history books about wars. I find the genre recommendations a little more sensical at least.

How is everyone enjoying Luna: New Moon? Good or bad?

I am enjoying it, but it is very heavy on the libertarianism. More than is believable. I really like it, though.

Robear wrote:

O'Brian did years of research in the Admiralty archives, reading diaries, official reports and ship's logs and based the plot elements for his first few books on records he found there. (After that, he kept to the broad strokes of history but invented the details of ships, actions and personages.) The language is appropriate for the period (at least according to some historians of the period I know on this side of the Atlantic) and he does assume a knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars and the customs and practices of the Royal Navy. Not least of which is the technical particulars of ships of the time. He gets an awful lot of details right.

Yeah, it sounds extremely authentic. Even without the Wiki link, I had zero doubt that it was accurate to other written information from the same era. I'm curious, though, about whether people actually spoke that way, or if that's an affectation undertaken by writers. I've seen the same speech patterns in other books set in the Age of Sail, so it's clearly at least a literary conceit, but I can't tell whether or not it was ever actually real. (much like our modern dialog often doesn't sound much like real people talking; when it's truly accurate, that tends to stand out and either be praised or criticized, depending on the skill and reputation of the author.)

And he does take the time to explain a good bit of the jargon, about a third of the way into the book, through the mechanic of a midshipman going over the basics of the Sophie for the landlubber surgeon. That does help a fair bit.

They're good reads, but I've seen gentler versions of the same affectation (using period English as if written for period readers) that I thought worked better. Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon series, for instance, handles this really well, in that the English captain sometimes has to explain the odder choices he makes to his dragon. She's able to work around the foreignness of the culture through the expedient of a fantasy creature that occasionally needs things explained.

Of course, a dragon on the foredeck wouldn't really have been an option for O'Brian.

There are indicators. Remember that the Bible would be an influential book for the literary classes, and KJV is pretty damn flowery. A good education would have included Latin and French, in England anyway, and both are more "fancy" than English, including different modes of address based on social status, so some dressing up might have been desired. And that would set the speaker apart from less educated, lower class people.

No one would have been exposed to fast paced simple exposition, like today's advertising or news coverage or movies. Plays (religious and otherwise depending on the setting) would have shown off fancier speech, and books too, so I suspect there was plenty of motivation to "dress up" language when speaking above or below one's station.

"Plain speaking" is a pretty modern thing, and so our idea of short and direct speech would be unusual in the period. (It was remarked on by travellers in the early Republic as unusual; that's another good clue.) While the lower classes spoke more directly, that was still not the simple, small word speech of today. You can find examples of differential speech patterns in Dickens and Twain and other writers; it's hard to argue they were not influenced by the practical speech of the times.

Also read Samuel Pepys diary; he reports speech frequently and believably (since he wrote for himself) although it does well predate the period of the O'Brian books.

Just some thoughts.

Robear wrote:

How is everyone enjoying Luna: New Moon? Good or bad? :-)

Just to provide some balance, I personally didn't get on with it and gave up on it, twice (around the 15% mark according to my kindle). I am not really sure why - partially I think I didn't gel with any of the backstabby rich wanker characters (I think I have to like the characters on some level) and wasn't interested enough in the plot to go forward, and the prose & dialogue wasn't punchy enough to compensate.

I didn't hate it with the passion of a thousand burning suns like The Magicians, I just mehed it at a time when I had other stuff I wanted to read more.

I finished Artemis though, but I only listened to the audiobook on that, and I suspect Rosario Dawson covers some of the sins. (I don't disagree with most of the stated criticisms, however, particularly the "I boobily went onto the landing and titted down the stairs" thing)

Hmmm. While I don't think you had anything like enough time for the story to develop, I can see that the characters are certainly representative of types. I think the natural inclination is to root for the more sympathetic ones, the kids and the workers. And that drew me in, anyway. Besides, it's interesting seeing what happens to the powerful, and looking at the overall system and how it changes under pressure.

But that's a matter of taste.

I didn't hate it with the passion of a thousand burning suns like The Magicians, I just mehed it at a time when I had other stuff I wanted to read more.

You've probably heard this, but Magicians gets much better as it goes, because the characters grow up. If you gave a bunch of teens insane amounts of magical power and no moral training or oversight whatsoever, you'd probably see outcomes about like that first book, as awful as it often was. I didn't enjoy it much, but it was skillfully written, and the later ones were, I thought, worth getting through the first and part of the second. (IIRC, they start waking up about halfway through Book 2.)

Those characters have a feeling of authenticity to them that you don't normally get from fantasy, and it's not all unbearable assholes forever. But it's also never really great either, so was it worth reading overall? I'm not sure. But, man, I remember those books very clearly, when many of them disappear into a general haze.

All five Grossmans are geniuses, in this generation and the previous. That family is just incredibly talented. And the parents? They saw some stuff...

DudleySmith wrote:
Robear wrote:

How is everyone enjoying Luna: New Moon? Good or bad? :-)

Just to provide some balance, I personally didn't get on with it and gave up on it, twice (around the 15% mark according to my kindle). I am not really sure why - partially I think I didn't gel with any of the backstabby rich wanker characters (I think I have to like the characters on some level) and wasn't interested enough in the plot to go forward, and the prose & dialogue wasn't punchy enough to compensate.

I had the same reaction. I just couldn't get through it. It felt like a slog to me, in large part because of the character qualities you describe.

(Still, everyone is different. Hell, I haven't made it past the 1/3 mark of American Gods, which everyone seems to love.)

I'm not qualified to say whether he's a genius, but one thing I can definitely say is that I remember the Magicians books quite, quite clearly. The characters have a texture and solidity to them that I don't think I've ever seen elsewhere in fantasy. They feel absolutely authentic to me, big hairy warts and all. I'm sure at least some mainstream books must have done that well, but I bet the ones that did were largely considered great works of fiction.

But is it worth reading? That's hard to answer. I think it was, but I could easily see others disagreeing. If you want to see what teenagers with magic would actually do, I don't think a better perspective has ever been written. Just don't expect it to be fun.

I'm perfectly comfortable with the concept that a piece of art can be objectively great (by some mythical measure) and that I might subjectively really dislike experiencing it. Or vice versa. I don't read books to have read them, or because it's good for me. If I'm not enjoying them, I stop reading them.

Which is why I said I didn't like it, not that I thought it was bad. People can like different stuff.

Absolutely, I still have a lot of resentment for Trichy making me read ‘Jonothan Strange and Mr. Norrel’ - I hated it so much, yet he and Josh gush about it....

Luna started slow but am about 1/3rd through and it is really picking up.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Absolutely, I still have a lot of resentment for Trichy making me read ‘Jonothan Strange and Mr. Norrel’ - I hated it so much, yet he and Josh gush about it.... ;)

It took me so much effort and willpower to get through that book...

Mario_Alba wrote:
Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Absolutely, I still have a lot of resentment for Trichy making me read ‘Jonothan Strange and Mr. Norrel’ - I hated it so much, yet he and Josh gush about it.... ;)

It took me so much effort and willpower to get through that book...

I enjoyed the hell out of that book and the show wasn't that bad either.

ranalin wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:
Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Absolutely, I still have a lot of resentment for Trichy making me read ‘Jonothan Strange and Mr. Norrel’ - I hated it so much, yet he and Josh gush about it.... ;)

It took me so much effort and willpower to get through that book...

I enjoyed the hell out of that book and the show wasn't that bad either.

I'm glad you liked it! The first 200 pages were pure torture for me (back then I still insisted on finishing every book I started), so I let the book rest for a year, and then came back to it... and the remaining chapters were more bearable. Never watched the show, though.

Speaking of over-long books, Neil Stephenson has a new 800 page book coming out in June. While I didn't care for most of Seveneves, I'll be giving this one a try.

Katy wrote:

Speaking of over-long books, Neil Stephenson has a new 800 page book coming out in June. While I didn't care for most of Seveneves, I'll be giving this one a try.

Holy sh*t!

If you want to be completely in the dark do NOT read the description.

Spoiler:

It's a sequel to Reamde!! ...Kinda

Katy wrote:

Speaking of over-long books, Neil Stephenson has a new 800 page book coming out in June.

Yay! I love 75% of his words!

ranalin wrote:

If you want to be completely in the dark do NOT read the description.

Oh noes! how will I know if these are the good words or the bad words?!

Also: Oh noes! Never quote a spoiler you didn't wan't to read!!!

But also: That spoiled spoiler suggests I might like these words!

Just a heads-up that Seanan McGuire's In an Absent Dream just came out. I haven't read it yet, but quite enjoyed the earlier ones in this series. They're sort of a midpoint between Harry Potter and The Library at Mount Char.... not all sunshine and roses, but no torture or child abuse, either.

Malor wrote:

Just a heads-up that Seanan McGuire's In an Absent Dream just came out. I haven't read it yet, but quite enjoyed the earlier ones in this series. They're sort of a midpoint between Harry Potter and The Library at Mount Char.... not all sunshine and roses, but no torture or child abuse, either.

I've got it from the library, but think I'll have to reread the previous novellas because I honestly don't even remember the first three.

ranalin wrote:
Katy wrote:

Speaking of over-long books, Neil Stephenson has a new 800 page book coming out in June. While I didn't care for most of Seveneves, I'll be giving this one a try.

Holy sh*t!

If you want to be completely in the dark do NOT read the description.

Spoiler:

It's a sequel to Reamde!! ...Kinda

Oh.

Spoiler:

It's been long enough since I read that one that I'd forgotten the names of the characters.