You know, you have a point, Swibble. I can only speak for myself, and other people may be getting far more out of their historical fiction than I am anticipating. So while, yes, perhaps some readers of O'Brian and his contemporaries are genuinely "learning" about English maritime history and what war was "really" like…

Swibble, your comments have been consistently kind and respectful to me. Thank you for your good sportsmanship and always thoughful ripostes.

Honestly, Swibble, it really doesn't bother me. I guess I place more of an emphasis on the "Fiction" rather than the "Historical" when evaluating these books; I hope they work for me as an act of literature, and Master Commander accomplished that task in spades.

Ah, I was wondering where you'd gotten to, WR. I missed your always insightful comments, and hope that your library will be more cooperative for THE WRESTLER'S CRUEL STUDY.

Membrum Virile
I confess that as I read that quote on M&C's Wikipedia page, I innocently and ignorantly clicked on the accompanying link for "Membrum virile."

Yeah, I agree that O'Brian romanticizes naval war, glossing over many of its unsavory aspects (such as death). I sensed a palpable nostalgia in the book for that time period, from the way that sailing used to be an activity inextricably bound with the volume of a man's sweat and the caprices of nature's winds, to how…

Wait, doesn't Maturin's upside-down shaking manuever SAVE that boy? That's Ellis who chokes on the slug, right? Or am I thinking of when he almost drowns?

Swibble, I'm afraid I must disagree with you here. I concede that the book is absolutely a romanticized, gilded portrayal of warfare, but that wasn't an automatic negative for me. As you said, it's an adventure story, and therefore must be, by its genre's very design, more focused on incidents and events rather than…

Wow, that "slow water torture of Esther's goodness" is PRECISELY the problem I had with Bleak House, which I found otherwise to be fabulous. God forbid we have a female protagonist with some shadings or, gasp, character flaws.

Actual good vs. actual evil
"There are no strict blacks and whites in horror, if it's any good. That is to say, there is no direct confrontation between actual good and actual evil."

Yeah, I'm only about 100 pages in right now. I thank the maker that the AVclub's procrastination has dovetailed with my own. For the second time, no less!

Amen to that, man.

Isn't this the same Stephen King who blurbed Ghost Story as being "Terrifying"?

9/11
Maybe I'm alone on this, but I would have been disappointed if Then We Came to the End had ignored September 11th completely. The book traces the transition from the cushy, booming 90s into a more unstable decade. It's a historical moment that I found the book explored very deftly through the prism of this small…

@TWR: That's a very good point about people being shoehorned into whichever roles are vacant and required in the group. Benny functions as a social center of gravity at the ad agency, but when he moves to a new job, the new group dynamics do not require a Chatty Cathy, and Benny is dismayed that he can't fit into his…

Methinks that Karen was someone who did very wellsocially in high school, but then had mixed results in the outside world. At times, she almost comes across as a sort of queen bee amongst "we", seeing as she's the instigator for so many episodes, but her behavior is obviously also alienating, since no one seems to…

I'd say he has a point, since it seems none of the characters really knows each other at all. Everyone has Jim pegged for a clown and a screw-up, but he turns out to be among the most capable and trainable of the group. No one can even be certain if Lynn has cancer or not, and her interlude is revealed to be Hank's…

The only office experiences I've ever had that resembled a family were the dysfunctional ones.

It's hard to convey a dreary or even unremarkable quotidian existence if you stuff it full of wacky incidents.

Someone on an earlier thread talked about the idea of "office as a family", which Lynn espouses to Carl when everyone visits him in the hospital. While Joe does exhibit empathy and consideration to several of his co-workers, Lynn and Janine being prominent examples, his self-conscious separation, even aloofness…