What's the opposite of pirates?

[desperance]

It seems likely that I have just embarked on a re-reading of Patrick O'Brian. This wasn't in the gameplan, it came upon me all unexpectedly; but I picked up a copy of Master and Commander in the book sale on Saturday, and picked it up this morning - just to find a place for it, you understand, on a bookshelf somewhere - and, whoops...

I am - or at least I used to be - a compulsive re-reader, but this last year or two I've been making self-conscious efforts to read new stuff almost exclusively, just because I felt I'd fallen so far behind and it's a shame to be a dinosaur. 'Specially in a lively and progressive genre.

Still: it's coming up Christmas, and one is allowed indulgences. Which is just as well, really: I am not in no wise pretending that I could actually, y'know, put this book down now that I have begun it. And having begun the one, the whole damn' series inevitably looms. I think the Lit & Phil has them all, if some endangered clown hasn't dared to pre-empt me in the borrowing thereof...

Comments

[birdhousefrog.livejournal.com]

One assumes, one does, that re-reading Master and Commander is not keeping one from finishing one's current work, that one did not pick up the book as a way to avoid completion of said manuscript?

Oz

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely - unaccustomedly - one's assumption is entirely correct. One had followed one's recently-established habit of writing a page before coffee; one had gone downstairs to make coffee. And to find something to read, because one had finished Ilario yesterday. And the book was in the pile, and the pile needed putting away, or at least somewhere else, and...

Well. One can figure it out from there.

But one would like to point out, in defence of one's virtue, that one did in fact put the book down mid-chapter (mid-chapter!) in order to come up here and do more work.

And now one has nearly completed one's three-page ration for the morning, and may go downstairs shortly and make jiao zi, or potstickers.

[birdhousefrog.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmmm! Potstickers! ::::drooool::::

One has completely forgotten what one was about to do in the contemplation of potstickers.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I love rereading these.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

My library has that series as unabridged audiobooks, read by Patrick Tull. They are just *wonderful*. In some ways, I like them better than the text versions (I haven't read all the books as text.) Listening while writing, or even while reading, would be excessively influential, but I think a person could listen to them while cooking without accidentally coming out with plum duff or something like that.

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to read that series - I'm sure I've got the first three books. Well, I know I have the 2nd and 3rd and I'm sure I've got the first, but I think it's stored away in a box at my mother's place, which makes it difficult to get at, because I never remember when I am going up there and I have many boxes full of books up there and I don't really feel like going through them all on the off chance that a book may be in there. One of these days...