Read the Novels and Forget Everything Else

magicmicah85•about 1 hour ago

I loved the Peter Weir adaptation and was always hopeful there would be more, particularly with that ending leaving it open like that. I picked up the first book recently so that I could read through it on vacation. I do tend to agree with Jan Morris in that only people who knew the author have reason to care about his personal life. Of course there are limits, and given the author has been dead for 26 years and the events he is accused of happened 70+ years ago, O'Brian can no longer atone for his past misdeeds. I'm not certain if knowing that O'Brian was a horrible family man will change my enjoyment of the first book, but that remains to be seen. I may not even get through reading it due to other factors, anyway.

I was curious if his family ever wrote about him and his son Richard Russ did in below article. I think this gives a good insight into how his son felt about his father, and particularly how his mother felt until her death.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/28/fiction.film

ComputerPerson•34 minutes ago

I haven't read Master and Commander and likely never will after reading this article. I couldn't get over the bad taste in my mouth I don't think. Fortunate for you to have read the book before the article.

Too many good novels that weren't written by dispicable people.

magarnicle•18 minutes ago

I think the best heuristic for separating artist from their work is: How much does the artist try to put their own personality into it?

Woody Allen films are very much soaked through with Woody Allen. I don't get the sense that O'Brian's books are to the same degree.

devindotcom•about 1 hour ago

Excellent books, full of understated spectacle and really excellent wordplay. If you get into them you may want to pick up "A Sea of Words" as a guide to some of the more esoteric terminology. Pretty much guaranteed you'll be stumped quite a few times in every book.

Insanity•1 minute ago

One of the great things about reading on the Kindle is that you can just highlight the esoteric words and the dictionary will explain it to you. Or you can use wikipedia if you need more info.

It's genuinely a great feature, especially when reading in non-native languages. (Can also translate the words then as needed)

abixb•about 1 hour ago

Good reminder.

As a percentage, most of my 'reading' has been outputs of frontier AI models. Need to increase my ratio of consuming human-written and human-produced text. Sometimes I fear drifting away from the 'core reality' of everyday life here in the US Midwest given how much I use AI.

genghisjahn•about 1 hour ago

[removed] made the mistake of assuming the contents of the article before reading it. My comment does not apply.

nine_k•about 1 hour ago

To comfortably indulge in all that, inherit old money.

Read the Novels and Forget Everything Else

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