Breaking Master and Commander news

In a recent comment to me, Ian asks if I've seen the new covers for the books. I offer you an example of one here.

Ian reckons these are aimed at the kind of people who read Sharpe books. I reckon they're aimed at GURLZ, because they've removed the ships from the covers and replaced them with people in historical dress, which is what GURLZ like.*

What do you reckon?

Edited later to add:

I am repulsed by these covers, and I think I understand why. Because they remind me (deliberately, I'm sure, as I've said) of the covers for the Philippa Gregory books I read. So I feel like they're being marketed in a reductive fashion that fails to take their true greatness into account.

I realise that this is completely idiotic, given that I am exactly, not just the type of, but the actual woman who reads historical fiction. But Patrick O'Brian books don't have romps and racy sex scenes in them. And, well, you wouldn't understand.


*Oh my god, I'm GURLZ. Jesus, I hate it when I fit a demographic. I hate it even more when marketing people try to sell me things after I've already discovered them for myself.

Post Captain and HMS Surprise

I can't believe the last book I blogged about was way back in September. I really haven't been doing much reading of late, which I suppose is pretty rubbish of me, and what little time I have spent reading has been partly taken up with re-reading Patrick O'Brian books.

Amusingly, I had my copy of Post Captain with me when on holidays and was able to pull it out of my bag when a conversation about Patrick O'Brian came up, leading my pal Dave to wonder if I maybe carry the entire series with me everywhere I go. Of course I don't, that would be a bit mental. But if you had to carry two, I think these would be the two I'd take. First of all, there's plenty of fun adventures by sea in them, with some beautifully written and quite tense battles even if, like me, you have some difficulty with nautical jargon.

Second of all, these are the books that kind of made me fall in love with Stephen rather than Jack. Yes, I know he's not a great catch. He's kind of funny looking and wears a weird wool suit. He is a laudanum addict and a man who loves nothing more than prescribing a slime draught or a yummy purgative, just to teach you a lesson about drinking. He's also not exactly steady on his feet a lot of the time and will, if left to his own devices, eat nothing but bread rubbed with garlic for days on end. He would probably also dissect your granny if you left her alone with him.

On the other hand, he plays Boccerini on the cello and speaks Portuguese, Irish, Latin, Catalan, Spanish, French, Arabic, and a smattering of Urdu. He's funny and smart and ferociously loyal. He's a really good intelligence agent, and an amazing naval surgeon (wouldn't look at you for under ten guineas on land, though). He is a keen naturalist who can sit and stare at birds or beetles for hours on end, and he will walk all day and night to get somewhere he wants to go, or just to have a think.

He is also, somewhat scarily and surprisingly, handy with a pistol. In fact, he's more than handy: he's deadly. He is the kind of man who can fight a duel with someone and then, when they shoot him, he can take the bullet out himself.

Jack, on the other hand, is merely the kind of man who can whip a convoy of East India Company ships into fighting shape, rescue his best friend from torture, get his own ship's company firing two broadsides in under two minutes, and get a beautiful woman to fall in love with him despite him having no money at all from one minute to the next.

Really, who needs new books when you can re-read ones you already love?

Master and Commander

There are times in a person's life when, for one reason or another, she is a little low. It could be that she's been coughing constantly and violently for four months and has recently been to the doctor and received a tentative diagnosis of possible asthma, with the recommendation that she gets rid of her cats. It could be that her house is still crowded and her parents have been in and out of hospital for minor procedures that could turn into major procedures down the line. It could be that she hasn't really been doing a whole lot of anything lately and just feels a bit meh.

At times like these, a person needs to re-read Master and Commander. There just is no finer antidote to a dose of the meh. If you are a regular reader of this blog, or anyone who has come into casual contact with me over the last few years, you already know how I feel about this book and the books that follow it. I will simply remind you, therefore, of the tender friendships and the sharp humour, the nautical noise and the naturalistic quiet, and the bright fresh air of the open sea.

Let's post drunk!

I've had a large measure of sippin' tequila and a couple of beers and I'm pleasantly drunk. What shall we talk about? I've been talking about the horrors of Celebrity Big Brother all day with my internet pals, and I'm bored doing that now. I'm only still watching it because I am fascinated by older Dirk Benedict. I haven't seen him, even a picture of him, since about, what, 1985 or something? It's so strange to look at him now. I feel like I went to school with him or something. He looks so much the same, but older. And more right-wing. It's so strange.

Celebrity Big Brother would be greatly improved by less bullying and racism, and more Dirk Benedict face down in the mud scrambling under a net with Jermaine Jackson and H from Steps singing the music from the A-Team out of the back of a limousine at him. I mean, how could any Sopranos dream sequence compete with something like that?

You know what? I feel down. And why? Because I haven't finished reading a book since the middle of November, and I kind of miss writing my book.

And I miss Jack and Stephen.

Feel warm though. Yum yum. Sleeps.

The Pirate Wars Vs. The Prize of all the Oceans

Several years ago I had an argument with some people about Pirates of the Caribbean: Something Or Other About a Pearl, I Think and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, two films about the Great Age of Sail. I didn't like the pirate film as much as the one about the British navy. At the time I put this down to many things. One, I wanted to annoy the people I was arguing with.
Two, the pirate film was a fairly hacky summer blockbuster that was crying out to have been made by Rob Reiner but instead was made by Gore Verbinksi, so instead of being The Princess Bride it was more like Cutthroat Island.
Three, I hate fun. I don't really hate fun, but everyone thinks I do, so I may as well go along with it.
Four (and really, this is the main one), I'm just not that interested in pirates. I don't know why. They sail around in ships and have adventures. They board other ships, launch broadsides against their enemies, live in caves and drink rum. They have a special pirate code (no, they really do) and they live in groovy little colonial outposts in the Caribbean. But I don't care.

Sadly, Peter Earle's book didn't do anything to make me care any more. For a start, it's a bit too much of an overview, and if I like anything, it's a detailed history of one bit-player who turns out to be pivotal in the whole history of everything ever (see Nathaniel's Nutmeg for the best example of this) and provides you with a great test case. But Earle doesn't do this. He sets out his store in good scholarly fashion, tells you what he's going to tell you, then tells you it, citing examples along the way. It ends up being a bit routine. There were pirates here. So the British government sent out ships and passed laws and gradually arrested or killed all the pirates so then there were no pirates. The end. Not packed with dashing incident and anecdote, as one would hope.

Ne'er mind, Vicar. But you did a lot better with The Prize of all the Oceans. In 1741, Commodore George Anson set sail from England with five ships and a total crew of approximately 1400 men. He had orders to sail to South America, map some territories and harass Spanish shipping. He had a diasastrous voyage and returned with one ship and about 500 men. But along the way he captured prizes worth about £400,000. Glyn Williams details everything about the expedition and it's all really exciting, including the adventures of the Wager, one of the smaller ships, which ended up wrecked on a remote island in South America, leaving the crew stranded and forced to find their way back to England in a bewlidering variety of ways. A fantastic book, well worth reading. Not least because the Chinese couldn't tell the difference between His Majesty's ship of war towing a prize and, well, pirates.

FFS!

It's amazing how some things can really push your buttons. I was so close to giving the staff in Waterstone's a piece of my mind, and then, just like that, I couldn't be arsed.

Still though. For fuck's sake.

23:Set sail for...

It's impossible to talk about Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf without talking about Jack Aubrey as well, so I won't bother taking that approach. And indeed, on the back of the book you are warned to have read your fill of Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forrester before you open this book, for once you look upon the deeds of Lord Thomas Cochrane, all fictions will pale by comparison.

And to an extent (a very large extent), this is true. The things that Cochrane did were truly amazing. He took on and beat French ships twice his size. He took so many prizes on one mission that he had only 23 men left on his own ship, not enough to man a gun crew, and then he took another ship by firing only the bow chasers at her, because her crew reckoned that only a maniac would come after them if he didn't have an enormous crew.

Cochrane was that maniac. A fighter in all things, a scrupulously honest man, he was also a parliamentary reformer and (sadly) a bit of a mentalist. He was an inventor and a man to hold a grudge. He was a man at sea on land, just like Jack Aubrey. In fact, many of the scrapes and escapades that Jack gets entangled in come from Cochrane's life.

But take heart, even if you've read this book and are thinking about reading some Patrick O'Brian. This book isn't funny. There is no choosing the lesser of two weevils here. There's no Stephen, no intrigue, and no real character portraits of any of Cochrane's faithful crew (well, you'd be faithful too if you were taking the kind of prizes these guys were), who surely must have been a huge help in carrying out his lunatic plans.

What there is, though, is an excellent account of the life of an extraordinary man, an interesting overview of the senseless waste and corruption that was rampant in Britain at the time, and some fantastic sea battles to re-enact with your cruet set whenever you have friends over for port.