{"id":335,"date":"2005-06-24T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-25T01:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=335"},"modified":"2005-06-24T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-25T01:43:00","slug":"obrian_patrick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2005\/06\/obrian_patrick\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Brian, Patrick: (01) Master and Commander (audio)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

I recently finished listening to Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander<\/cite>, narrated by Patrick Tull<\/strong>, which was excellent. I’d read the first three of O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, and though I’d enjoyed them, I also didn’t remember a thing about them and had no real urge to keep going. I got the audiobook of Master and Commander<\/cite> out of the library, thinking it might get me interested in the series again—and also, if it worked, there were lots and lots of them to fill my commute.<\/p>\n

Audio is a good way for me to experience these, because I’m not able to skim past the nautical stuff. Moreover, by listening to the narration, I can get a fairly good picture of what’s going on, which is enjoyable and exciting. Hearing the prose also lets me savor the humor (including some jokes I probably missed the first time) and the skillful way O’Brian uses omniscient point-of-view to show the life of the ship. In the future, however, I may read\/skim the books I haven’t read yet to get the big picture and remove the tension, and then listen to the audio versions for the fine details. Since I remembered so little about this book, I got perhaps too caught up in the story, to the point where I kept wanting to tell random people confidingly, “I’m worried about James Dillon.”<\/p>\n

Dillon is the Lieutenant on the Sophie<\/cite>, Jack Aubrey’s first command, and one of the things I’d forgotten was how much of the book, the first in the Aubrey-Maturin [*] series, is concerned with someone other than Aubrey or Maturin. I’m not quite happy with the Dillon arc, absorbing as it was; the setup is straight out of Dunnett or Kay, while the resolution is entirely plausible but of a different genre.<\/p>\n

The book is very episodic, covering the course of Jack’s command of the Sophie<\/cite>; the movie (which I enjoyed vastly) picks out specific incidents and uses them to ornament an entirely different plot framework. If I had more time, I would love to plot out the way that the ship’s fortunes rise and fall over the course of the book, as I think it might prove instructive. Even the slowish start, of getting the Sophie<\/cite> ready to sail, has its hills and valleys; and by the end of the book, we’re heading up mountains and down crevasses. It was highly absorbing and I really enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

[*] Oh, and Aubrey and Maturin aren’t anything other than platonic friends. I consider this indisputable, since a minor thread concerns how the ship’s Master has a terrible crush on Aubrey, which is blindingly obvious to everyone except<\/em> Jack, even though Jack perfectly well knows the Master’s sexual orientation (not that any of the characters use that term). Can’t get any straighter than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently finished listening to Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, narrated by Patrick Tull, which was excellent. I’d read the first three of O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, and though I’d enjoyed them, I also didn’t remember a thing about them and had no real urge to keep going. I got the audiobook of Master and Commander … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (01) Master and Commander (audio)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4,118],"tags":[336],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aubrey-maturin","category-historical","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-obrian-patrick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}