Having greatly enjoyed the movie starring Russell Crowe I thought I\u2019d give the book a try, and so I checked this one out of the library. It is the first book in a series of around 20(!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This book has an incredible amount of sailing jargon and you really get hit over the head with it a few chapters in, when the ship\u2019s doctor gets a tour from one of the veteran sailors. Staysails, forestays, futtock-shrouds, rigged hanks, topgallant, fo\u2019c\u2019sle – these are just a sampling of the tricky words that come up throughout the book. The author did his research, and it shows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But where this book really shines is the swashbuckling and naval battles, the relationships between officers, and the exploration of the intersection of leadership, duty, income and friendship. I especially liked the ship doctor\u2019s writings during the adventures – his secret shorthand journal contains his observations and dreams of exploration and science. Great stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main character, Jack Aubrey is likable, flawed, funny, and prone to running his mouth to his own detriment when suitable lubricated during port calls – not what I expected at all. This isn\u2019t a stuff book but one full of adventures giving the real taste of life at sea during wartime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll continue the series – most it is available from the library – but if I have a gap in my reading list these books may fill it with a little adventure. After all, now that I know what a mizen is I should find some way to use that knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next up is \u201cThe Flavor Equation\u201d by Nik Sharma. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having greatly enjoyed the movie starring Russell Crowe I thought I\u2019d give the book a try, and so I checked this one out of the library. It is the first book in a series of around 20(!). This book has an incredible amount of sailing jargon and you really get hit over the head with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-R8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}