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Friday, July 24, 2009
The Wine-Dark Sea, by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars
"Will I confess a grave sin?" he asked.
"Do, by all means," said Jack, looking at him kindly. "But if you managed to commit a grave sin between the gunroom and here you have a wonderful capacity for evil." p. 90
[T]hough which came first, the deed or the doer, the goose or the egg, I am not learned enough to tell."
"Would it not be the owl, at all?"
"Never in life, my poor Stephen. Who ever heard of a golden owl?" p. 106
The Truelove, by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars
I read the Nutmeg, the Truelove, and the Wine-Dark Sea all in an ecstatic rush, not stopping to post anything in my journal. Then came days of sick children who let no one in the house sleep. I thought this sleepless phase would pass sooner, but since it hasn't, I'm trying to add these in now, and sorry but my brain just isn't in it for clever literary review. Let's just say, these books are quite good and quote:
...and after a while he said, "He longed for a daughter, I know, and it is very well that he should have one; but I wish she may not prove a platypus to him." p. 9
"Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led an unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey."
"My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming buttercup yellow." p. 17
The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars
quotes:
"A Barmecide feast, sir, I am afraid," said Jack.
"Not at all, sir," said Martin. "There is nothing I prefer to..." He hesitated, trying to find a name for salt beef, eighteen months in the cask, partly desalted, cut up very small and fried with crushed ship's biscuits and a great deal of pepper. "... to a fricasse." p. 223
"Sir," said Stephen, "I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them- I look upon good novels- as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints. Had I not read Madame de La Fayette, the Abbe Prevost, and the man who wrote Clarissa, that extraordinary feast, I should be very much poorer than I am; and a moment's reflection would add many more." p. 253
"Obstruction at every infernal step," said Jack. "How I hate an official." But his face cleared when Stephen told him of the little girls' escape and asked whether he disliked having them aboard.
"Never in life," he said. "I quite like to see them skipping about. They are far better than wombats. Last time we touched here, you bought a wombat, you remember, and it ate my hat." p. 275
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