While all this food prep and stitching have been going on, I've been reading and listening.
This lengthy audiobook, all about being a seaman in the 19th century, in sailing ships, comes complete with unintelligible terms and shouted commands. And it's gripping.
Endless adventures on land and sea, interesting characters, including a captain who has to escape Bonaparte's soldiers walking hundreds of miles in a bear suit. With his ship's surgeon acting as bear leader.. and many more capers, all of which make sense in the context.
The history is impeccable as is the knowledge of life aboard the royal navy ships and the politics of the Admiralty and parliament.
I'm not sure I could read this in print. I need the narrator who's excellent at performing the commands on board ship so that the reader gets the gist.
This has been the background to my stitching and cooking prep lately qv:
When I need to actually read words, I have a biography of Agatha Christie on my Kindle.
It's very well researched, and uses a lot of references to her books, including the Westmacott ones which are much less well known. They're not mysteries and I find them less worthwhile.
The writer, Laura Thompson, shows us the real life sources of a lot of the characters and plots, and Christie's business acumen. Worth a read for the social history of the early 20th century. The page I put up because I couldn't access the opening page, deals with the time after her mother's death, and the people mentioned are her parents.
The discussion of Christie's personality isn't very flattering, but interesting. She wasn't very skilled with people in real life, oddly, and I wonder if real people were too complex for her. Her fictional characters are so much simpler, limited motivation largely around money. In real life this reflects her own belief.
My neighbor's new fridge arrived yesterday. Evidently it was curtains for the old one. I wonder if it was under warranty, since the new one looks the same, maybe a replacement. I haven't asked, in case it's a tender subject.
ReplyDeleteI've never read any of the Patrick O'Brian books. My son-in-law is quite fond of them. To be honest, I've never read much Agatha Christie either. How is that possible?
ReplyDeleteI use Christie audiobooks to sleep! Not very flattering.
DeleteI'm with Ms. Moon in not having read much Agatha Christie. I think I read one or two when I was at an impressionable age and didn't think much of them so haven't revisited. I suppose I should. Patrick O'Brian is often on Resident Chef's reading list but I've never indulged. Not exactly subject matter I'm overly interested in.
ReplyDeleteI guess having grown up in an island nation depending on naval strength, I feel an obligation to read what the sailors went through, how the press gangs worked, the parliamentary politics threaded through it all.
DeleteChristie is comfort reading for people yearning for a time that never was, and a life of servants and afternoon tea that would never have been for them. During the pandemic she's had a lot of reading.